After the island
by planet p
Summary: AU; a story about what happens after the island. Emily/Lyle, Emily/OC
1. Chapter 1

**After the island **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Waking, she slowly became aware of several things. The room was white, like any hospital, except she wasn't in a hospital. She slid off the pale green bed, the sound of the bright lights overhead loud in her ears, and it seemed to her, that they buzzed angrily down at her.

The corridor was the same white as the room had been, but here there was a sign directing staff toward the Special Needs Unit.

She gasped inwardly in horror. _My God, Emily, what have you done?_ She had come to them of her own will, it was true. Still, she could not help but feel as if it had been the sickness that had decided for her. If she had been of rational mind, she felt certain, she would not have.

She stared at the man in the smart suit.

The man stopped, not so much staring as gazing back at her.

She fought the almost overwhelming urge to step away from him. Miles away, she had noticed him too late, and, stupidly, she had turned in alarm. Now, he stood much too close. She felt suddenly cold, dressed in a hospital gown and with her feet bare. Under his gaze, she felt like a new toy.

There was nothing in his expression that indicated that he was at all threatening, except that she had every reason to feel threatened by this man.

With mounting terror, unable to move, she watched him lift his hand – awkwardly, she realised – to touch her hair. She shivered involuntarily and cursed herself for allowing him to do so.

"Plush…"

The sound of his voice was like a punch. She felt suddenly sick. Every part of her screamed that she needed to put as much distance between herself and this man. She needed to get away from this man!

He dropped his hand, awkward again.

Her eyes hardened as she struggled to remain without emotion. She would not give him the satisfaction!

He gazed into her green eyes.

If possible, she felt sicker than she had moments before. She wanted him to stop looking at her like that, though she was not sure how that was. She gazed back at him searchingly, but she could find no animosity, not even intimidation.

He stood there, not looking away.

She realised that he was waiting for her and wanted to scream.

"Come with me," he said in a strange voice.

She did not want to come with him anywhere, though, she realised, that if she did not, he would only make her. She had no friends here – and she had no one but herself to blame! But she would not cry, not in front of him! So she wondered where he was taking her and what would happen to her when she got there. Then she remembered that he had sounded funny. He was sick, she realised. But the cold seemed such an ordinary thing, except he was just an ordinary person.

They walked in silence to the elevator where she learnt that she was on SL-9. The elevator took them up. Ordinary people hurt other ordinary people every day.

* * *

She could not recall having met him, yet, she knew she must have. Yet, she could recall surprisingly little. She wanted to ask how long it had been and how she was. Was she really better? Was it for good?

"How long has it been?" she heard herself ask in a direct voice. Damn! She hadn't meant to speak so soon or to sound so eager.

"Two months," Raines replied.

Emily repressed a shiver – the man reminded her of a zombie – and said: "My doctor-?"

Raines nodded, cutting her off.

She made no apologies for her frown. "I want to speak-" she began seriously.

Again, he cut her off. "You are."

She laughed shortly, lacking amusement.

"You are well," he told her. "Well enough for our purposes."

Emily's expression hardened. "Purposes?" she scowled.

Raines watched her, perhaps amusedly, or exasperatedly. "Though you yourself appear recessive of any expression of the anomaly," he explained, "you are by no means-"

"I will not assist you in harming my brothers!" Emily interrupted angrily.

Raines frowned. "That is not-" He paused and revised, determined not to lose patience. "You must have realised, my dear, that you would be useful as breeding stock if nothing else."

* * *

Emily sat in a cell on SL-26 – she could not believe how big the place was! – and for a long while she could only think of one thing. Suddenly, she found herself wanting to laugh because that was exactly what she was to these _people_ – 'stock'! When she'd settled down and was thinking a little more clearly, she prayed that this did not mean that the next time the Centre caught up with Jarod that they would not be looking, not to bring him in, but to eliminate the threat he posed to their corporation. For a moment, she felt an overwhelming urge to laugh all over again. And even though she wasn't praying to anyone in particular, certainly not to God, she could hardly believe that she was praying at all. Yet, she thought, if her family found out what she had done, she would have to pray that they forgave her!

She was interrupted in her thoughts by the sound of the door and looked up to see Lyle. "Any expression of the anomaly?" she asked in what she hoped was a convincing television reporter voice.

Lyle looked at her strangely and shrugged. "Jarod is a Pretender," he explained. "Mirage has the Inner Sense."

Emily glared at him. Mirage was not named Mirage. His name was Ethan!

He walked over and sat down on the bed beside her.

Without thinking, Emily shoved him in the arm. She didn't want him sitting next to her, and she certainly didn't want him talking to her in that patronising tone.

"Pushy!" Lyle commented amusedly.

Emily glared at him again, but was secretly thankful that he hadn't slapped her, or worse. She didn't know what he was doing in her cell, but she knew that he dangerous, and even more so when he was angry.

"What is interesting," he frowned, as though debating his choice of words, "is that Jarod and Mirage," and here he glanced at her as though he thought she might offer some rebuke, though she did not, and continued, "share the same anomaly, but different expressions. In fact, there is only one anomaly. Scientist people would tell you this proves that predisposition for expression is inherited, as opposed to actual expression." He grinned. "No? Not interesting?"

"What are you doing here?" Emily demanded.

Lyle took something out of his pocket. "Gum?"

Emily made a face. "I don't think I'm allowed gum," she said horribly.

Lyle grinned.

With narrowed eyes, Emily took the piece of gum he offered her. He wasn't going to give her anything funny when she was valuable the way she was, she reassured herself stupidly. If taking his stupid gum was the only way to make him leave then she would take his stupid gum!

* * *

"It's always best to do these things the old fashioned way," Raines said.

Emily felt sick, and wondered if she should tell him about Lyle giving her strawberry gum.

Raines had just started to tell her what was going to happen to her next, when Lyle strode into the office and walked up behind the chair Emily was sitting in and placed his hands over her ears. "We have a problem," he told Raines, who, not appearing pleased, frowned.

"Take your hands-" Emily protested.

"Quiet, Russell!" Lyle told her.

Raines looked at Lyle seriously. Emily had obviously heard him tell her to be quiet, which meant that she had heard what he had said earlier also.

Lyle took his hands away from Emily's ears.

Emily glared at Raines, who called someone to come for Emily.

Emily spent the remainder of the day undergoing medical tests. Stupidly, she hoped she came down with whatever it was Lyle had caught.

* * *

Emily sat on the bed in her cell and missed her family, though she told herself she couldn't let herself think about them. She was worried what the Centre was really planning, and if it had anything to do with her family, but she forced her mind to the subject of this problem Lyle had mentioned before she had been taken out of the room, and somehow she ended up thinking, instead, of gum, and this talk of old fashioned ways.

As far as she was aware, it wasn't as though the Centre was exactly in possession of too many Pretenders, and if they wanted a shiny new Pretender child – 'the old fashioned way' – they would need at least one.

Lyle was a Pretender. She pushed this thought away. Perhaps there was some way to induce predisposition, if predisposition was inherited rather than expression. The expression of the parents would then become irrelevant as the desired expression would be able to be induced. Somehow, she had a feeling, that this was not yet a reality.

She wanted to cry, but the thought she next had frightened even that out of her. Her brothers, Jarod and Kyle, had been Pretenders too, and though Jarod had escaped and Kyle was dead, she was sure this wouldn't be much of a problem.

It was a long time before she finally fell asleep.

* * *

"At this moment," Raines explained, "the Chairman is suggesting that it be Angelo."

Emily had no idea who Angelo was.

Raines sighed. "Angelo is a low level Empath," he told her.

Emily frowned momentarily. An Empath? She had only ever heard of one Empath, and that was from her mother, who had told her how Catherine had tried to rescue her brothers. She glared horribly. She had a feeling she knew who Angelo was now.

"The Chairman would prefer it be Angelo," Raines finished.

"And what would you prefer?" Emily asked.

Raines sighed again. "It is not under my authority-"

Emily snorted. She was sure he had done plenty of things against the Chairman's authority in the past. What was stopping him now?

"I would discourage the Chairman's suggestion," Raines admitted.

"You would suggest Lyle?" Emily spat, and contemplated explaining that predisposition for mental illness was inherited too.

Raines frowned. "It isn't so simple."

Emily met his gaze.

"We have two choices at this moment," Raines said almost uncomfortably.

Emily was careful not to let her relief show – those two could only be Angelo and Lyle – but at the same time she felt sickened by the capacity of her own mind and her willingness to accept her fate.

"And of the two, yes," Raines continued, "I would choose Lyle."

"Even then, there may still be an element of non-Pretender inherited," Emily said smartly before she had the time to really think about what she was saying. "If Ethan inherited the Inner Sense from his mother and Lyle and he share the same mother, it is possible that Lyle also inherited the Inner Sense, or that any child of his may."

* * *

Emily stared at the wall, hating herself. What had gotten into her? If she wasn't careful, she was really going to say the wrong thing. It didn't matter how much she hated Lyle, or even Raines, she couldn't let her hatred lead her into making stupid decisions.

She thought about Ray, her husband. She missed Ray so much. What would Ray think of all this? What would her husband think of her and another man having a child, and then the child being taken off her to be exploited the way her two brothers were exploited, one of who was now dead? She had never told Ray any of that, though, and now she wondered why.

She laughed stupidly. She wasn't even a Russell anymore. Her name was Fraser now. For a moment, she contemplated telling Lyle this the next time he called her Russell, but then she realised just how stupid that would be. Instead, she wondered if she would ever get out of the Centre, and if she and Ray would ever be able to have their own children? Would Ray even want to have children with her after what they were going to make her do? Would he understand and forgive her?

Why had she even been so stupid as to come here?

She dissolved into tears. What had she done?

* * *

Emily screamed and kicked as the nurses dragged her toward the room. She wasn't going to go through another one of their fucking tests! It was her body and she was going to fight!

A doctor came and sedated her.

She woke in a pale green bed that was not a hospital bed in a room that was not in a hospital.

She slipped out of bed and walked across the room to the door. It was locked. She turned back around and began breaking everything in the room.

Nurses came and she screamed and hit and scratched and kicked and bit.

She was sedated again, laughing the whole time.

The doctor ordered another set of tests.

"Where's Raines?" Emily demanded.

"Dr. Raines is no longer in charge of this project," the doctor told her.

Emily stared at the white pin that he wore pinned to his white lab coat that looked like the Centre's insignia.

"I've already had this test," Emily told a nurse later. The nurse ignored her.

Emily pushed the nurse off her and ran for the door.

She didn't get far. She was prescribed pills after that, and whenever she wouldn't take her pills, they held her down and forced them down her throat.

* * *

Emily laughed and smiled at Lyle.

He reached across and touched her hair, before turning away to order her another drink from the barman.

Emily had seen him earlier in the day and he had asked her if she wanted to go out for a drink. Instead of laugh, because that would never happen, she had asked: "What for?"

"Your birthday," he had replied with a smile. "You didn't forget, did you?" Then he'd laughed.

But Emily had forgotten.

Lyle turned back to pass her the glass of Coke then promptly spilled it on her. "Shit!"

Emily laughed and put a hand over her mouth.

"I'm sorry," Lyle apologised. He shook his head and smiled. "Look, let's get it out before it stains your dress."

The bright green dress had been her birthday present. Emily let Lyle lead her in the direction of the bathrooms, and the pair stood in front of the mirror, Emily attempting to remove the Coke with some paper towel and water.

Emily looked at Lyle and smiled. "It's fine," she told him gently.

Lyle was still frowning. "The anomaly doesn't exist in a recessive form," he said seriously.

Emily stopped smiling.

Lyle grabbed her arms and backed her into the wall, but Emily fought him and they ended up on the floor. Emily pushed and scratched. She wasn't just going to let him do this to her. Then she hollered. Lyle smacked her head on the floor. He didn't stop until she had stopped struggling and fallen still.

* * *

When she opened her eyes, Lyle was standing watching her. She struggled to stand, but Lyle got to her before she even had the chance to reach the door.

She balled her hands up into fists and hit him.

"Hey!"

She kept on hitting him until he got a good hold of her and was able to stop her.

"Hey!" he growled angrily. "Don't ruin your birthday now! Behave!" He looked into her eyes.

Emily felt like throwing up. How he could even look at her after what he'd done, she didn't know. She started to struggle again.

He tightened his hold on her, eyes still fixed to hers.

She couldn't breathe! He was holding her too tightly. She tried to tell him that she couldn't breathe.

"Promise to behave!" he growled.

Emily tried to speak to tell him she would, she would behave, but the words refused to come out. Frightened that she would suffocate, she nodded frantically.

Lyle stared at her harshly for a couple of moments before loosening his hold on her. Before Emily could take a breath, he kissed her on the mouth.

Then they walked out of the club and drove back to the Centre.

Lyle walked her to SL-8 to see a doctor about her head. When the doctor asked how she'd hurt her head, Lyle said she'd fallen. Emily didn't say anything. She just stared at the doctor's nametag that read Dr. Cox.

* * *

The doctor was upset. He yelled at her and shook her. "What the hell happened?" he shouted.

So Emily told him about Lyle.

The doctor let go of her and left the room.

Emily stood there and cried.

The nurse started at her, but this time she didn't tell her to get it together and stop crying.

* * *

"I never touched that bitch!" Lyle said harshly. "Fucking lying bitch!"

"Why do you think she would accuse you of something you didn't do?" the Tower doctor asked.

Lyle laughed. "You tell me, doctor! Why don't you tell me what those fucking pills she's on are for?"

The Tower doctor scowled.

"Hell, you probably told her exactly what to say!" Lyle said in amusement.

"I beg your pardon!" The Tower doctor stared at him in shock.

"Either that or one of your bitch nurses!" Lyle shook his head. "I'm not going to stand around and listen to your shit!"

"Now just you listen to me-!" the Tower doctor began angrily.

Lyle grinned and turned away from him. He didn't seriously think he found him threatening? "I suggest you get your crazy girl a shrink before she starts accusing you too."

"Don't you walk away from me!" the Tower doctor shouted.

But that was exactly what Lyle did.

"This is the end for you, young man!" The Tower doctor called after him. "Mark my words, I will ruin you, one way or another!"

Lyle laughed. Sure he would!

* * *

The Tower doctor kept his word and ordered a Tower investigation. The investigation took six months and ended with Lyle receiving nothing more than a transfer.

Emily stopped speaking after that. Her nurse cried. Emily did not think she would cry ever again.

A week later, a woman stopped in front of Emily. "It's time to go home," she said.

* * *

Emily stared at the house the car she was sitting in was parked in front of. It was her husband's house. She gazed at the house a moment longer before turning back to the woman.

The woman looked past Emily at the house and neat green lawn. "You'd best go home," she said.

"Who are you?" Emily asked.

"My name is June Hooper," the woman replied, her gaze lingering a moment on Emily's very pregnant stomach. "It's time," she said.

Emily opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement. Behind her, June's car pulled away from the curb and drove off.

Emily walked across the footpath and towards the house.


	2. Chapter 2

**After the island **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters. I don't own the songs _Don't Dwell_ and _Change_.

* * *

He'd waited, Ray told her. He'd waited for so long for her to come home. Her brother was looking for her, and he'd come here. He'd told him about the corporation who'd taken he and his brother as children, and that he'd been worried that they had taken her too. He'd told him the sorts of things they did to people. He had waited. He had prayed. But now he just couldn't anymore.

"I'm here," Emily implored.

Ray shook his head. "I can't," he told her.

Emily sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

Ray stared at her belly for a moment. "They didn't take you, did they?" he asked.

Emily laughed. "Nothing like that," she replied. More than anything, she wanted to tell him the truth, but she could see he had already made his mind up, and even though it was hurting her, she didn't want to hurt him. She sniffed again. She wished she could have cried then, because now she had to lie to the face of the man she loved. "I left you, and," she smiled ironically, "he left me."

Ray frowned. "I'm sorry," he said.

Emily smiled at him. "My own fault," she told him.

"You should go," Ray said.

So she did.

* * *

Emily stood in front of husband's house with the last of her things that Ray had kept and given back to her – the others he said he'd given to charity. Although he hadn't said, Emily knew that Ray had been scared by what Jarod had told him the Centre could do to people, and he had made up his mind then that he didn't want to be one of those people.

She smiled at the neat houses she could see along the street, because if she didn't smile, she wasn't sure what she would do.

* * *

Emily smiled brightly. "Hello, Jarod," she said.

Jarod stared at her for a long while, as though not sure whether she was really real, then he walked toward her and put his arms around her, holding her tightly. "I thought you were dead like Kyle," he said, frightened.

Emily suddenly couldn't breathe, but she did her best to push the panic down. Jarod was her big brother! And he'd been so afraid! She silently scolded herself for her thinking of herself when her brother was upset. "Well I'm not," she responded, teasing him softly with the whine in her voice.

Jarod stepped apart from her and frowned and she knew he was frowning at her belly. "I don't understand," he began, confusion clouding his eyes. "You're pregnant but your husband suddenly doesn't want you?" And slowly, the confusion changed to anger.

Emily felt her heart break and smiled. "Not hubby's baby," she told him conversationally and hated herself.

* * *

_Five years later_

_Don't dwell on the past, that was lost and didn't last. That summer bloom is fading fast. But I am falling for you._

Emily gazed at the dark-haired little boy asleep beside her, rested against Ethan's arm. Ethan glanced at her as though to say it was okay.

Emily had named the little boy Snow. Everybody said he was a normal, healthy, happy five-year-old. Emily loved Snow, and she knew Snow loved her too. But sometimes she would look into his eyes, so like his father's, and she would become frightened.

Outside the car window, Emily watched the blinking lights of the city like eyes in the dark.

_Don't dwell on the pain, tears you've cried and autumn rain. That fair weather's here, and gone again. But I am waiting for you._

Snow turned to Emily sleepily and wrapped his arms around her middle, resting his head against her stomach. "I love you, mummy," he murmured.

Emily placed a hand on his hair, her eyes gazing into the darkened window at her own reflection. "Love you too," she said in an empty voice and watched the her in the window silently speak the same words.

Tracy Chapman's _Don't Dwell_ was Snow's favourite song, and though she didn't object when he asked to listen to it, it frightened her more than she could say. There was something wrong with her son, and maybe she was the only one who saw it, but she saw it. Sometimes she thought that Snow was not her son at all, but just an exterior, and her son was what was inside, laying in wait in the dark spaces for the time to come, for the time when it would be his time to be her son, and then she would lose Snow forever. And sometimes, when Emily thought these things, she scared herself more than she ever thought a person could ever be scared.

* * *

Snow liked to sing, though not the Miley Cyrus and _High School Musical 2_ the other kids were listening to. Mostly, Emily didn't mind. Sometimes it made her smile, he had such an adorable little voice. And sometimes Emily thought that the songs he sung said a lot about that other boy, and it was during these times that she wished she could cry just so that he would see her pain, just so that he would see that she could never live if he left her.

"If you knew that you would die today, if you saw the face of God and love, would you change? Would you change?"

Snow sang along to his Tracy Chapman CD Jarod had allowed him to play over the Jeep's sound system.

"If you knew that love can't break your heart, when you're down so low you cannot fall, would you change? Would you change?"

Emily glanced at Jarod from the backseat. They were going to the cemetery to visit Kyle, for God's sake!

"How bad, how good does it need to get? How many losses, how much regret? What chain reaction would cause an effect? Makes you turn around. Makes you try to explain. Makes you forgive and forget." Snow sung the next part louder than the rest, it was his favourite part of the whole song. "Makes you cha-a-a-ange! Makes you cha-a-ange!"

Emily shifted her gaze to the windscreen. They were almost to the cemetery.

"If you knew that you would be alone, knowing right but being wrong, would you change? Would you change? If you knew that you would find a truth that brings a pain that can't be soothed, would you change? Would you change?"

Jarod parked in front of the cemetery gates and switched the Jeep off. The sound system died.

* * *

Emily stared at the grave of her brother as the breeze brushed across her face. She pressed her fingers to her lips and rested her hand on the headstone for a long moment. One day, she would make Lyle pay for what he had done to their family.

* * *

Emily was in an elevator. The cold seemed not to care that she wore a hospital gown. She stared at the other person in the elevator with her. Lyle glanced at her for a moment, perhaps in some silent comment on the muzak playing, before looking away again. Emily did not look away though. She stared for a moment at his jacket. She was so cold. She reached across and pressed the button to stop the elevator. The muzak stopped playing.

Lyle turned and frowned at her. He pressed the button to restart the elevator and the muzak started up again.

Emily stared at him staring at her daring her to press the button again. She reached across for the button, but before she could press it, Lyle had taken her hand and backed her up against the wall.

Emily smiled at him triumphantly. She would win. She would.

Lyle leant closer and kissed her. Then he reached over and pressed the button.

* * *

Emily pushed him away from her and up against the opposite wall. With a smile, she kissed him back. She had won.

* * *

Emily woke covered in sweat and trying to catch her breath. The dreams had started two years ago. She shivered and sat up and walked into the bathroom. The thing that scared her most of all was not what happened in these dreams, but that sometimes she even thought she looked forward to them.

The bright light hurt her head. She padded across the cold bathroom floor to the mirror and stared at her reflection, the sweat cooling on her body until she was shivering.

* * *

It was time for lunch, which was what Emily was thinking about when she stepped out of the building where she worked as a researcher for a newspaper. She didn't write articles herself, but did research for the articles others did.

The woman smiled at her, taking in the grey skirt suit, dark pantyhose, black high heels, and red hair tied back in a pony tail. "Hello, Emily," June said.


	3. Chapter 3

**After the island **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Emily wore the bright green dress with the spaghetti straps and short skirt he had given her for her birthday and bubblegum pink high heels. She chewed on a piece of strawberry gum, occasionally blowing a bubble that ended with a loud pop.

Finally, he seemed to notice her, the only one standing still amongst the mass of partygoers, the lights occasionally making colourful patterns on her dress.

"Fancy a fuck?" she asked when he walked over looking serious. "I'm cheap."

He said nothing to her, but grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her after him.

Emily wanted to slap him across the face, but she just giggled and stumbled about in her high heels, losing one of them in the process. "I lost my shoe!" she laughed, and stooped to retrieve it quickly. As they were leaving the club, Emily, now holding her high heels in her hands, said to the security men at the door: "I think he likes me."

* * *

Outside, Lyle started walking away from the club, dragging Emily after him. They were passing a jewellery store a block from the nightclub when Emily attempted to yank her arm away from him and stumbled backward into a large pillar standing in front of the jewellery store doors.

Lyle turned back and stared at her angrily.

Emily flung one of her high heels at him half-heartedly. It missed. She laughed.

Lyle walked over and gripped her arm painfully.

Emily stepped away from the pillar and stopped very close to him. "Fuck me."

* * *

Lyle pushed her back up against the pillar and kissed her. Then he stepped away from her. "Keep walking!" he told her, and turned and walked off.

Emily walked after him, pausing to pick her high heel off the pavement, and wondered if she should ask him why he'd parked his car so far away, or if he'd just forgotten where he'd parked it.

* * *

It turned out Lyle hadn't brought his car at all, and after half an hour of walking, Emily shivering from cold, they took a cab back to his apartment. Emily hadn't expected Lyle to offer her his jacket, and he hadn't, but if she had been expecting the cab to be any warmer, it had hardly been.

* * *

Emily dropped her high heels by the door, shivering a little less now that she was indoors. She heard the door close and turned to see Lyle standing very close. Maybe he expected her to step backward, away from him, but she didn't, and he reached his hands up and ran them up along her bare arms as she stood there shivering. She suddenly felt sick. They were alone now, like before. She pushed the sickness away. "I said fuck me!"

Lyle let his hands slide down her arms. "Come with me," he said, and she noticed what she hadn't before. He sounded sick. He let his left hand fall from her arm and gripped her right hand in his own, and turned and walked away, pulling her after him.

As she allowed herself to be pulled along, she wondered for a moment why he was always getting sick, but then she remembered how long he had been sick the last time, and wondered if there was something else wrong with him. The thought didn't stay long, because now she felt even sicker than before, and she wanted to pull her hand out of his and run away, run as far away as she could. But then she thought of Kyle, and she thought of what Lyle had done to her, to her whole family, and she became angry, and the anger made her strong.

She stopped walking. He had let go of her hand. She glanced around her but all she could see was more dark corridor. Ahead of her, Lyle turned and stared at her. She stared back at him through the blackness. Annoyed, he grabbed her hand again and yanked her after him.

They came into the bedroom and Emily took a seat on the bed, turning to pick up the large stuffed something from off the bed behind her. It was a penguin.

Lyle took it off her and threw it away. It landed on the floor on the other side of the bed.

Emily wondered if the penguin belonged to his girlfriend, though she was not sure whether he had a girlfriend at the moment, so maybe an old girlfriend, she thought, and took hold of the front of his clothes to pull him closer to her and kiss him.

She lied back on the mattress and let him fall on top of her, still kissing her. She felt absolutely sick, and for some reason she found herself wondering what Ray was doing, which was silly, except the moment she stopped thinking about him, she suddenly couldn't breathe properly, though Lyle didn't seem to notice.

Emily wondered if she wouldn't have minded it so much if they had been in an elevator, but that was so silly she wanted to laugh, even though she thought that she would throw up if she did, so she tried not to, and instead wondered what the Emily in her dream would have done in her place, or what she would have done if he had been Ray.

Lyle stopped kissing her mouth and kissed her neck, which she didn't like. "No! What?" She started to push him away before she realised what she was doing. "Are you some kind of vampire?" she asked in annoyance, to cover.

Lyle looked at her strangely. "No," he said.

Emily gave him a strange look back. "Whatever," she replied. "I don't service the undead."

Lyle laughed.

Emily stared at him as though she thought he was being immature. She hoped he didn't notice how fast her heart was beating. She was terrified.

Lyle stopped laughing and started kissing her, but on her mouth.

Emily pushed him away from her. "Did you ever see _Pretty Woman_?" she asked. "Richard Gere, Julia Roberts? She doesn't kiss."

He kissed her again.

Emily pushed him off her, a little harder than before. "I don't like it."

Lyle sat up.

Emily didn't take her eyes off him. She had gone too far. She pushed herself into a sitting position. Why was she acting so stupid? He had turned away from her and was sitting on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry," Emily apologised softly. She was suddenly more afraid than before.

She got a bit closer and put her arms around him, but not too tightly because she didn't want to come across as threatening or for him to feel how hard her heart was thudding. He didn't say anything, and it started to worry her.

"I'm sorry, Lyle," she said gently, hoping the use of his name might help her and he would not just get angry at her continued apologies. She kissed the side of his head. "Turn around," she said quietly, taking her arms from around him.

He turned around.

Emily didn't smile, but he wasn't smiling at her either, and placed her hands on his shirt buttons and started to undo them from the top downward, then, when she had done that, she brushed both his jacket and his shirt off his shoulders and kissed his shoulder. "You've got very nice skin," she told him quietly.

Lyle kissed her on the shoulder back, but didn't try to kiss her on the mouth again, and she lay back, underneath him, that familiar feeling of not being able to breathe with her again, and fought not to scream when he gently moved against her, and then less gently.

* * *

Her dress was gone, probably on the floor, and she stared at the arm across her middle. It was almost over, she promised herself. Not long to go now. She carefully lifted his arm off her and climbed out of bed.

Later, when she was sure he was awake, she sat and stared at him for a long moment. He was sitting on the other side of the bed, back turned to her, already dressed as though ready for work. She settled on the edge of the bed, her own back turned to him, and reached down to collect her dress, ignoring the penguin, and slipped it back over her head. She felt better with the gun in her hand. The end was so close now, but she told herself not to get careless, not to get stupid. Nonetheless, she heard herself say, "I came here to kill you."

Lyle laughed, and though she couldn't see him, she was sure he smiled. "I noticed."

She turned quickly to face him and pointed the gun at him, to find that he had turned as well, and had a gun pointed at her. "Put the gun down!" she shouted.

He made a face. That wasn't going to happen.

So she shot him.

He didn't say anything to her, but the gun dropped out of his hand and he collapsed to the floor.

She kicked the penguin away from her and moved around the bed to kick the gun that he had been holding and had dropped away from him – after all that, he wasn't going to shoot her back – and settled on the edge of the bed, wishing she had her high heels, which were by the door. She would have to watch, to make sure, but she looked away and stared at her bare feet instead.

She picked her high heels up from inside the door, and left the way she had come.

* * *

June was waiting for her in a parked car a block away. She frowned when she saw Emily, walking bare foot toward the car, high heels in her hands, wearing a jacket over her dress that didn't suit and she was sure was a man's besides. Still, she thought, it was cold, and Emily had probably hidden the gun in one of the pockets.

Emily opened the car door and sat down. She pulled the door shut a little too harshly, but did not hand the gun to June, and stared out of the windscreen instead. She started to cry.

June merely watched her without comment.


	4. Chapter 4

**After the island **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Her husband was working late. They'd had a Christmas wedding, she remembered. Almost five years ago. December 25. They'd met through work. They had both worked for the same corporation, same branch. He'd been her boss. She had not married him out of love. She did not love William. She hated him. Hated everything about him. She'd married him for the same reason he'd married her: it was just business! They had two small children now: four year old Edna, who she had named for his first wife (and he had nicknamed Eddie, bastard!), and three year old Dexter.

Her husband was working late, and she could not sleep. Strange, she would have thought it the other way around. She was sure it was the house. Everything in it was so old. The refrigerator, the television set… More than that – for God's sake! – he still wore the wedding ring from his first marriage. An awful plain silver thing he wore on his right hand, and the gold ring from their marriage on his left hand where a wedding ring should be worn.

Edna was dead and gone. Long gone. But here in this house – God, it was her house now! Though it didn't feel like it! – she was very much an inhabitant. In all of the photographs, in all of the rooms… It was as though, whenever her husband and her were in the same room together, he was sharing some private joke because he could remember all the times _she_ had been in the same room, and she just felt so sick. Ideally, she would have suggested they move. Sell this old house with its old everything, and move. But that would be about as effective as the instance she had told him that the photographs of his dead wife and daughter scared her, and that a person should not have to be scared in their own home, except that she had very quickly realised that this was not her home at all – it was Edna's home. Because Edna could never leave. She'd died here, he'd murdered her here, and here she would stay, until he died, or – dare she to think it? – until the debt was repaid in another life. More than once, she'd dreamt that she'd burned the house down. She was sure it was not out of loyalty or caring toward her husband, but she hated the fucking dream. It always made her so anxious.

Without turning, she knew Edna would be watching her from out of her photograph on the bureau. Early on, she had realised that she looked very much like this woman, this woman whose place she had taken, and had not. They both had blonde hair, hers was straight (though Edna's had been curly), and they both had brown eyes. They had both been doctors, Edna had worked in paediatrics and she Autopsy.

She sat and stood up, still unable to sleep. She made her way into the hallway to where the telephone was located and, irritable, dialled the number for her husband's office.

"Raines," he answered.

She laughed down the phone.

"Go to bed," he instructed her tiredly.

"GO TO HELL!" she screamed.

He hung up on her.

She continued to laugh, possessed, for a long moment, until she remembered the children and sobered. The quiet buzzed angrily in her head. She did not want to wake the children.

She rang him again and told him that if he was intending on staying so late again that he should just not come home that night, and with that, she hung up and marched off to bed.

She found the little bottle of Edna's perfume in the bathroom and unscrewed the cap. It smelt of violets. She screwed the cap back on and replaced it in the cabinet behind the mirror where she had found it, resisting the urge to pour its contents down the drain or smash the stupid little bottle.

Earlier, she'd found out that she was pregnant again. She'd spent so long just sitting there, staring down at the stupid little test she was holding, not even really seeing it anymore, just the blur that was her bare legs and, beyond that, the toilet floor. When she'd finally moved again, finally come back to life, she'd thought she was going mad. God, he was turning her mad!

She laughed again, the sound hollow in the darkened room, and lay down.

She must have fallen asleep, because she woke again just before dawn. On the other side of the bed, she could hear Raines talking to himself in a low voice. She remembered that he'd been sent to Africa for reconditioning and wanted to laugh again. He always made her want to laugh in his face, or scream at him, which was no wonder – Fuck, she hated him!

Finished praying, he lay down beside her.

"Dear God," she said, "I hope my beloved husband dies in his sleep, the bastard. Amen."

Raines laughed.

She rolled over to face him and started hitting and kicking him, swearing the whole time.

He took hold of her arms and pulled her tight against him, stopping the hitting and kicking, but not the swearing.

In the morning, though he had already woken and left the room, she was sickened by the thought that she had fallen asleep in his arms, and walked to the bathroom and sat on the toilet for far too long.


	5. Chapter 5

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

The short green lawn still looked as though it shouldn't have been so green, and maybe – not really – it had been painted that way. Behind him, the cab pulled away and disappeared into the distance. He walked up the steps and stepped into the vast foyer. The unceasing drone of the ventilation system and computers nestled in the back of his head, a sickening sound that stayed with him, wail-like, long after he had left. The feeling of sickness from the flight from Florida and the cab ride increased.

The receptionist, a young Asian woman dressed in an expensive suit, blouse, _Hello Kitty_ tie, and company nametag that spelled out her name – Midori – in gold letters, wordlessly followed his progress across the room. Lucy's younger cousin was not big at all, with glossy black hair, a small nose and mouth, and small black eyes, and it was often this smallness that lead people into believing that maybe she wasn't as old as she said she was, that maybe she was not 25, but younger. She did not smile or speak, but wordlessly – unsmiling – took the card he handed her to scan him in. She did not see the bruises, scrapes and cuts she had to have known her father, Mr. Lee, had put into motion before his transfer back to Delaware.

Lyle wanted to say something to her, but, even though maybe she expected him too – expected him to taunt her about how he'd killed Lucy, how he'd had an alibi – he was so cold, and so tired, and he'd wanted it to stop, all of it to stop…

She just looked at him coldly – remembering her mother, remembering Lucy, remembering with a horrible gagging sickness how she had once trusted him – and handed his card back.

He took the elevator to the first floor where his office was located and noted that the muzak had been replaced by one of the local radio stations that he found he didn't care much for. The presenters prattled away at an unreasonable speed, in high-pitched, whiny voices, and the music – current and popular songs – seemed to be losing more and more any real musicality as the years ran on.

The elevator stopped and he stepped out into the corridor. The new office was not the same room as his old office, but it was like his old office, just as most of the offices on this floor were like the ones next to them and across from them.

Letting himself into the new office, he sat down in the chair behind the desk and stared at the blank computer screen. It hadn't been switched on.

* * *

_Eight days ago_

Unflinchingly, his voice unfeeling, Lyle answered the detective's questions. Carefully, he filled in what was not asked.

The detective glared at him. Earlier, he'd been the one to introduce himself and his partner – Detectives Camillo Rodriguez and Stacie Duff – and now, he was the one asking the questions. His partner was a woman with a shade of the tan he sported and chemically lightened brown hair.

She was the one taking the notes.

The world was turning, turning away. His chest hurt. He wondered if it was the stitches, or something else. The hospital air was stale and suffocating. He thought he could taste the chemical in Duff's light brown hair, though he was sure he could not.

Rodriguez was not surprised. That much was on his face.

It was always going to be this way. Lyle knew he was the first one they would have come to. It was always the same. But maybe this time the ending would be different…

Outside, the air was humid and suffocating. Later, it would rain. Outside, the world waited.

"God, I hate hospitals!" he added, once he had finished his answer to Rodriguez's latest question.

"I'm sorry!" Duff yelped. She turned and rushed out of the room, taking the imagined chemical taste with her.

Rodriguez glared at him a moment longer before turning and following his partner out of the room.

Lyle wondered if it had been Jarod who had tipped them off where to look for him. It didn't seem unlikely.

After a while, the pair returned, Duff looking pale and Rodriguez looking angry.

Rodriguez asked if he had known Lucy before.

Lyle told him he had. She had worked for him a couple of years ago. Six years ago. She had been his secretary.

Duff scratched it all down on a notepad. The noise made him itchy.

"Did Lucy have any family that you were aware of?" Rodriguez continued.

"A 14-year-old daughter named Bobbi," he answered. "With an I."

Rodriguez frowned.

Duff stopped scratching.

"Where is Jordan?" Rodriguez asked.

Lyle frowned. The chemical taste was back again.

"Jordan Randall," Rodriguez clarified. "You attended the same university between 1978 and 1981."

Lyle shook his head, causing it to hurt.

"Where did you put her?" Rodriguez growled.

Something was happening that wasn't supposed to be happening. "You make it sound as though something happened to her," he said, slightly amused.

The scratching started up again. He'd forgotten about the scratching. Had it been so annoying before? he wondered.

Rodriguez laughed harshly.

"Look," Lyle told him, "I didn't know Jordan." He sighed, as though it had been him who had been laughing and was now tired. Nobody got tired from laughing. But there was something wrong with the air. "All I know is that she went missing."

"But you know where she is," Duff interrupted. The scratching stopped.

Lyle looked at her. She had light brown eyes, like her hair.

Duff pointedly fixed her gaze with his. Jordan was a nice white girl. Jordan could get him in trouble. "Jordan was your girlfriend," she told him. "But you were showing too much attention to other girls. Jordan became jealous. She confronted you about it and you got into an argument. Something happened. She died. Maybe it was an accident. It didn't matter. She was still dead. You blamed the other girls. It was their fault Jordan was dead. So you killed them. But it didn't make it better at all. But you didn't stop."

"You'll never find her," he assured her, and for a moment he could see that different ending so clearly. He smiled.

* * *

That different ending washed away as easily as the rain that afternoon.

* * *

_Present_

On Wednesday, Bobbi had her fifteenth birthday at a small, recently-opened adventure park. Over the lunch hour, Lyle took a cab to see her. She was there with a group of friends. When she saw him, she screamed until he was asked to leave. He supposed, on second thought, that it had been a bad idea. He wondered if Bobbi would tell her family that he had come to see her.

* * *

On Friday, he met Raines in the corridor and the pair walked to the dining hall on SL-1 for lunch. Maybe Raines wanted to say something, but he said nothing.

Lyle wondered about the gold ring on his left hand.

Later, Raines invited him to dinner.

Lyle stared at his chips – he always ate chips when he was upset, it was pathetic – and thought about the dream he'd had before he'd woken up in hospital.

* * *

_Bobby stood in the middle of the road and thought about the wheat, thought about Grandpa Joe's farm, thought about Grandma Lorelei who had died when he was younger._

"_Don't go," a voice interrupted his thoughts._

_He stared at Jimmy, his eyes wide, and wanted to run away. Jimmy was dead!_

"_No, Bobby!" As though reading his mind, Jimmy stepped forward sharply, and put his arms around him and held him tightly._

_For a moment, Bobby thought he would scream, but his eyes filled with tears. "You're not real,"__ he told Jimmy._

* * *

Jarod couldn't breathe, nor could he believe what he was reading.

* * *

"_How is everyone? How are you?"_

"_Alive," Jarod responded, dropping Emily's things into the trunk and slamming it shut. He turned to her and burst out: "Where were you? Why do you look like that? Whose baby is it?"_

"_The Centre. I'm pregnant. Lyle's," Emily answered bluntly._

_Jarod stared at her._

"_Any more questions?"_

"_I don't understand," Jarod said again, confused. "What were you doing at the Centre? Did Lyle kidnap you?"_

"_No," Emily said. "I was unwell. They helped me to get better. They just wouldn't let me leave afterward."_

_Jarod stared. "Are you alright?"_

_Emily smiled. "Yes," she said._

_

* * *

_

_Jarod stared at her for a moment, then walked around the car to open the front passenger's side door for her._

_Emily got into the car._

_Jarod shut the door after her._

"_Jarod," Emily said._

_Jarod frowned. "Yes, Emily?"_

"_Can this just be a secret between us?" Emily asked in a strange voice._

_Jarod stared at her. "Okay," he agreed._

* * *

_Jarod was overjoyed and angry all at the same time. He was overjoyed that Emily was alive and looking so well, but he was very angry at her too. She should have come to him. She should never have gone anywhere near the Centre. He had tried to find her but with no luck. He had thought she was dead, and he was sure he wasn't the only one who had thought so._

_He watched Emily sleeping in the seat beside his own. Did she have any idea what the Centre could have done to her, because they could do some much more than just make her a baby? Regretfully, he wondered what had possessed him to agree to keep Emily's secret from the others._

* * *

_Project Ophelia._ Feeling sick to his stomach, Jarod read the file again, to be sure he really was reading what he thought he was reading, but nothing changed. The Tower had wanted Emily to have a child with her own father? Jarod suddenly wondered if Emily had been telling the truth when she had said that Lyle was Snow's father.

He wanted to cry then, because he didn't want to have to ask Emily, didn't want to have to hurt her like that. He would do anything not to have to hurt her.


	6. Chapter 6

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

It would take some time to get used to the new apartment, he conceded, as he passed through one aisle of Confectionary Cove in favour of another, eventually deciding on a couple of chocolate sloths from New Zealand with the name 'Slava the Sloth' pasted across their colourful plastic packaging, and a glass jar of honey-flavoured hard boiled candies.

* * *

The sweets were gifts for the dinner at the Raines's house, which he had been invited to by Raines the previous day. In the cab on the way back to his apartment from Bay Mall, he wondered if Sam would be there. He was Raines's son, after all.

When he arrived, he offered the children the chocolates, which the little girl thanked him for, and he offered their mother a chocolate also, but only received a filthy look. Sam, he supposed, would not be coming.

After the look Mrs. Raines had given him, he offered the jar of sweets to Raines, who took them without comment and placed them in one of the kitchen cupboards. Mrs. Raines shot them both glares, which Raines ignored, and introduced Lyle to the children, Eddie and Dexter. He had no need to introduce Lyle to his wife, the woman and Lyle knew each other from work.

He had used to tease her about becoming his new stepmother, Lyle remembered, when she'd been interested in marrying Mr. Parker, and after Mr. Parker had confided in her as to who Brigitte's son's father really was.

Dinner was served at six o'clock, and for half an hour, there was something like peace, until Mrs. Raines became suddenly upset and decided to voice her anger that Raines had invited Lyle into their home.

Disinterested in the argument, Lyle took one of the serviettes from the centre of the table and folded it into a swan to divert the children's attention. When he asked, Dexter suggested it was a plane, but Eddie was closest with her suggestion that it was a duck. Agreeing, he folded it into a plane next, and this time Dexter guessed rightly that it was indeed a plane.

After dessert, when the children were allowed to eat their chocolates with the fruit salad their mother had served, the children left with their mother, to be made ready for bed. Raines left to make a telephone call in another room, and Lyle decided to collect up the dishes to wash in the kitchen sink.

When the children had finished their baths and brushing their teeth and had been put to bed, Raines and his wife started arguing again, so Lyle left to read the children a bedtime story, though the children had no picture books, so he told them one of the stories he remembered his grandmother had told him when he had been younger. When he had come to the end of the story, and told the children that it really was time for them to go to sleep, Eddie asked if she and Dexter could have hugs, and for a moment Lyle just stood there, and then, of course, he hugged each of the children and wished them goodnight and left the room, shutting the bedroom door after him.

* * *

He did not bother to interrupt the arguing pair and left the house and called a cab.

* * *

She was hot and sweaty and her muscles ached as though they had been stretched too far, for too long. She had just returned from hockey practise. For some reason, her shin hurt too.

She wished she could have stayed and gone with some of the other girls for cool drinks and an ice cream. In fact, she was angry that she had not been allowed to do so. At this rate, she was never going to make a friend. The thought fuelled her anger.

She sprinted towards her parents' bedroom, to where she anticipated she would find her mother, Catherine, willing to beg her to take her out for a cool drink and an ice cream at the place the others girls had said they would be going, if the need called for such. She hadn't changed out of her hockey uniform, but she didn't care – if she didn't hurry the other girls would be long gone by the time she even arrived – and she hoped her mother would understand.

She was out of breath by the time she reached her intended destination, and maybe that was why she didn't realise that her momma wasn't alone until she heard the man's voice.

"This doesn't happen anymore, do you understand?"

The voice was raised and firm. She thought that it was maybe a little angry. And it was definitely not her father's voice.

Without realising it, she had slowed, still out of breath, but also wary, and now afraid, afraid that the angry man was going to hurt her momma. And now she could see through the partially open door, into the bedroom. She could see momma, and she could see the man, and she saw that she knew him. He worked at the Center, where her father worked. Her daddy was the boss of the Center. Though her daddy and the man worked together, she did not like this man.

The man wrestled momma, struggling, on to the bed.

Her chest and her throat ached suddenly, but she couldn't move – Why couldn't she move? – and instead she stood and watched.

The man was angry again. Angry at momma. "No," he told her, somewhat laboured as he tried to subdue her. "Don't fight!" He planted himself on top of her on the bed.

She knew what would happen next, what was going to happen now. That she couldn't watch! Her legs finally found movement again and she ran. But she didn't run to her mother to help – instead she ran away. She intended to run for help but she only made it to her bedroom, where she climbed under her bed and curled up in a ball, and even though she covered her ears with her hands, she could still hear the sound of her mother sobbing. She knew that she was only lying to herself, she'd never meant to run to the Center where she knew her daddy would be, or even to the police station, because the telephone was just down the hall, and she was hiding under her bed rolled up in a ball whilst the angry man hurt her mother.

She stayed there, trembling, until she was sure the angry man had left, and then she hated herself.

When she finally dragged herself out from under the bed and grabbed her stuffed blue rabbit from the mattress and clutched him with death-like intensity to her chest, her legs were shaking and her heart was beating too fast. For a moment, she didn't know if her mother was even alive, and it wasn't until she had slunk down the hallway and seen her mother, crying and trying desperately to clean the blood that just didn't seem to want to budge off the mattress, that she was satisfied that she was still alive. She imagined running to her mother, she imagined holding her and talking to her, imagined making it all better. But the blood was on her mother's legs too. And she ran back to her bedroom and scampered back under the bed until her daddy arrived home.

She was there to greet him but said nothing of what had happened to her momma, and neither did momma. And when it was time for dinner, she ate her dinner, and still nothing was said. By the time she was to go to sleep and momma hugged her goodnight, she knew that nothing would ever be said.

* * *

Parker could hardly look at the psychiatrist. For a moment she was silent, and then a chair scraped and she moved across the room, reached a hand to open the door and walked out. Afterward, she wondered if she had done the right thing.

She said nothing about the memory to anyone but the psychiatrist, but later, the memory changed. Later, she did not run away because she was scared, but because she was angry; she did not hide under her bed for so long because she was afraid that her mother was dead, she hid under her bed because she wished that when she came out she would be dead, and she did not speak at the dinner table to her father of what had happened to her mother because she hated her mother, was jealous of her mother, and because she thought that she had gotten what she had deserved, she wanted her mother to have to suffer through telling her husband the truth; she was not going to help her.

Parker ran from the psychiatrists' office and was sick. All she could do was be sick, she couldn't even cry, and she just kept thinking how she had hated her mother, and how much _she_ hated Raines, how much she wanted to make him pay.

* * *

She couldn't think, as hard as she tried, and she couldn't say, couldn't tell anyone what had happened in the psychiatrist's office, what she had remembered. She felt empty, as though her soul had been sucked out of her and she was just a body, or a zombie. And she felt angry. She was always angry.

She didn't know how she ended up in that corridor, but she was in the corridor, and Raines was too. He was talking to Lyle, but she didn't care about interrupting their conversation. She took out her gun, and then she was shouting, shouting about what he had done to Catherine, what he had done to her, and all the time her hand wasn't shaking a bit, even though she was shaking everywhere else.

Raines might have tried to interrupt her, to tell her she was lying, but she didn't let him, and she was the one with the gun. And then she noticed Lyle staring at her, though it wasn't in shock, but as though he wasn't quite seeing her, and she was so angry, and then she heard Lyle say something which she thought was directed at her, but she didn't hear what, because of all the screaming she had been doing and was still doing in her mind.

She laughed, gun still in her hand, and noticed that other people had emerged in the corridor and were staring, standing at their office doors, or having come from another corridor at hearing the confrontation, and all she could do was laugh.

She was fairly certain she had heard right next when Lyle told her to calm down, because suddenly she forgot all about Raines and the other people and she stared at Lyle, and finally he was looking at her and seeing her, and he was her brother – her brother! – and he was taking Raines's side, but of course – he was just like Raines. She stepped forward and pushed him away from her because she didn't want him to be her brother anymore, and he stumbled backwards and hit his head on the wall. Then she realised that she had stopped laughing, had even stopped screaming, and it was so quiet, and then she turned around and ran, and Lyle said nothing to stop her, and maybe she wouldn't have heard him if he had.

* * *

She ran to Sydney and told him everything, like she knew she should have before, and she somehow felt normal again, and she could think again, and she didn't start screaming at the top of her lungs, and she didn't pull out her gun – she was calm. And she knew that she had to tell Raines's wife.

* * *

Raines stood in his office, thinking things through, Cox standing beside the door, looking lost, with his tag announcing him as Deputy Director of Med Space pinned to his suit, and Lyle was crying, as though he was a child, and it only made it worse that they were in the room and had not come over to comfort him, though Cox kept shooting glances in his direction, as though he thought perhaps he should say something.

"Don't cry," Sam said, walking in, and Raines wanted to leave rather than to have to admit to his son what Parker had accused him of. "Nobody's shot."

Cox looked at Sam suddenly, as though he thought it would have been better if someone had been shot. If someone had been shot then he could have been working, and he wouldn't be standing in this room with Lyle crying and Raines saying nothing, and unable to stop himself thinking of his sister. He did not think that Raines had done what Parker had accused him of, but he could not bring himself to say even that, and Sam's words hung in the air for much too long as though they would never leave.

And then Lyle started laughing, but he was still crying, and Cox gaped at Sam, as though Sam was going to be the one to rescue them all: big, strong, Sam.

"That's enough," Sam said firmly, though not angry, and Lyle stopped crying, and he stopped laughing, and he just sat there on the floor, against the wall, and stared at nothing in front of him. "What now?" Sam asked then.

Nobody answered, but Raines strode to the door and walked out.

Sam looked at Cox, who stared back at him for a moment, before dropping his eyes to the floor. "I don't know," he muttered, and Sam turned and walked across the room to Lyle.

He knelt down in front of Lyle and took hold of his chin, lifting his gaze to meet his own. "What does Catherine say?" he asked, but Lyle was looking at him but not seeing him. "TELL ME!" Sam shouted, suddenly angry. "WHAT DOES MOTHER DEAREST SAY?"

And then Cox was there, and he was holding Sam's arm, and Sam stood abruptly and stormed out of the room.

Cox stared at Lyle, who after a few moments stood up and just stood there, and Cox turned his chin with an index finger and noticed that his pupils were uneven sizes and that he had concussion. "How did this happen?" he asked, and he could feel himself becoming calmer, could feel himself reverting into his role, into the doctor.

Lyle looked at him for a long moment, stared right at him, and said: "It doesn't hurt anymore," and Cox wasn't so sure he was talking about his head at all.


	7. Chapter 7

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

"What?"

"Is it true, Miss Parker?"

Parker considered for a moment, wondering at the seriousness in Jarod's voice. Could it be hiding concern, fear? "No," she replied.

Jarod did not speak for a long moment. "Then… What are you planning?" he asked, serious, but giving nothing else away.

Parker thought about her mother in that cabin in the forest. If only someone had thought to ask her that question… "Don't you see?" she said, and she thought that maybe Jarod did see.

"Good luck, Miss Parker," Jarod imparted, and ended the call.

Parker smiled. This time… Raines would be the one needing all the luck he could get.

* * *

She stood in the elevator, school bag sitting neatly against her back and the back of her school dress, her school sweater having been removed and deposited uncaringly into the school bag a short time ago. And finally the doors opened and she saw the person she had been waiting for.

Raines, his hands trembling and seeming not to notice her, joined her in the elevator.

Her blue eyes went to the Director of Med Space pin he wore. What a joke! With an almost lurch, she stepped closer to him, pushing the muzak – an unnecessary distraction, which she detested – from her head.

Lost in his own thoughts, Raines suddenly looked up and saw her standing there. His blue eyes, lighter than her own, did not show surprise, in fact, they barely showed recognition.

This was all she needed, it seemed, for a moment later the girl screamed, and it was the same scream that woke the girl, thirty-eight years later.

* * *

One way or another, she informed Sydney over her cup of coffee, Raines would not be working at the Center for much longer.

Sydney was no less concerned when she had explained this to him than when he had thought the awful things she had screamed at Raines had really happened to her, and was quick to point out the many people over the years whom had shared the same idea she was sharing with him now, and whom had met unfortunate ends. And yet, somehow, Raines was still working for the Center.

"Even if I have to do it myself," Parker promised, "it will be done, Sydney." She smiled. "And then…"

"With Raines out of the picture," Sydney interrupted, looking troubled, "Cox will become Director. I hardly think anyone would be more happy with-"

Parker laughed at this concern.

"If you are to gain Chairmanship, Miss Parker, it will matter no more than present feeble objections. Cox will be Director. Whomever the current Director chooses as his successor, it is not in the Tower's preference to oppose this decision."

Parker laughed again. "Were that the case, Sydney, then Raines would not be Director now."

Sydney frowned. "I am afraid it is the case," he replied, meeting Parker's gaze. "I am afraid that Jacob chose Raines as his successor."

Parker merely stared, and thought of the ridiculous rumours that one still sometimes heard that Jacob and Raines had been somewhat more friendly than their positions called for, and that, in fact, Raines's marriage called for. "Then I shall take care of it… when the time comes," she replied as the end to the conversation.

* * *

She was surprised, later in the day, by a visit to her office by Raines, though decided she would allow him to speak. Death threats would only amuse her, and she knew how fond he was of such devices.

"I have a family, Mel," he said, when she had shut the door, and suddenly she didn't like the way he was looking at her and not looking away, or the way he had used her name.

She glared hatefully.

"They're children."

"I WAS A CHILD!" Parker screamed, suddenly, unexplainably, more angry than she had been moments before.

"I can't make the past not be the past, Mel," Raines told her, "but it's up to you what happens next."

Parker laughed horribly. "I should kill you!" she whispered.

"There are a lot of things, both of us, perhaps, should have, and should not have, done," Raines said calmly.

"NO! YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE!" Parker screamed.

"I shouldn't have done," Raines agreed, and did not flinch. He took a step closer to her and lifted a hand. "Mel, I'm sorry-"

"Touch me and I kill you, you fucker!" Parker hissed, and somehow it sounded more awful to her than when she had been screaming, the gun in her hands trained deathly still on his chest.

Raines smiled, and Parker felt sick. "If you want," he proposed, "I will never touch you again."

Parker stared at him and did not feel safe, despite the gun between them.

"Tell me what you want, Mel," he said, as calm as ever, and Parker had the sickening feeling that he was silently laughing at her.

"I want you to stop calling me that _name_!" she spat disgustedly, tightening her grip on the gun in her hands. "AND I WANT YOU TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY OFFICE!"

Raines smiled. "I can do that," he told her, and turned toward the door.

Parker wanted to shoot him, but her hands had started to shake so that she was sure that even if she tried she would probably miss. She put the gun away so that he wouldn't see her hands shake.

He turned at the open door, ready to leave. "Until next time," he began, and paused in momentary consideration, "Miss Parker."

Parker stood, with clenched teeth, and waited until he had walked out of the room, before slowly moving across the room, and, with massive effort to stop herself from slamming it, shut the door after him.

She fell down in the chair behind her desk and sobbed silently. She didn't know what was wrong with her, why she had let him get the better of her, and now she was crying.

* * *

"Oh, you didn't!" Lyle whined, and Jarod didn't know why he had: why he had arranged this meeting; why he had allowed his mother, Margaret, to come along. He had known, however, that Lyle would come, that he would not pass up this chance to recapture the Pretender.

In response, Jarod kept his expression firm.

Lyle rolled his eyes, and for a moment Jarod thought he might not be okay, but then Lyle was looking at him again, and the moment passed, except that Jarod could hardly not notice the bruises that were only now starting to fade.

Margaret glared at Lyle with nothing but pure hatred, and took a seat beside Jarod.

Lyle smiled winningly. "Margaret," he acknowledged, tossing his head.

Margaret said nothing, but did not take her gaze from his.

Lyle looked away from her, momentarily disappointed, and returned his attention to Jarod. "Mommy looks well," he commented.

Jarod's jaw tightened.

Lyle sighed. "So… talk…" he said, impatience starting to intrude on his disgustingly false friendly manner.

Margaret told Jarod she was going to order a coffee and asked if he would like one too. Jarod nodded and Margaret walked off, away from the table.

Jarod quickly explained Project Ophelia to Lyle, who laughed.

"So how is baby sister?" he asked conversationally.

Jarod contemplated shooting him, but there were too many witnesses, and Margaret was just across the room. Instead, he said: "Tell me what I came to hear."

Lyle shrugged. If he really wanted to know he would just have to tell him.

* * *

Margaret returned to the table with two mugs of coffee and placed Jarod's coffee on the table in front of him, though Jarod did not seem to notice, and Margaret noticed how Jarod was looking at Lyle, and that Lyle was smiling. She placed her own coffee down, but before she could sit, Lyle had stopped smiling and stood, and was now holding her wrist tightly so that it hurt.

Jarod stood almost as quickly, face dark with anger, and reached out to pull Margaret's wrist from Lyle's grip, but Lyle was already dragging her after him, toward the door.

"Let go of my mother!" Jarod demanded, anger making his voice shake.

They had stepped out of the coffee shop and stood in the middle of the small arcade of shops. Ignoring Jarod, Lyle glanced around him quickly and turned, pulling Margaret after him.

"They're everywhere," Margaret whispered to Lyle, because now she could see them through three sets of automatic doors. Men in suits. The hand holding her wrist was shaking. Margaret looked around for Jarod and saw that he was much closer than before because now Lyle had stopped.

"LET HER GO!" Jarod bellowed and raised a fist to punch Lyle, who, Margaret thought, given the proximity of the men, might have turned to tell him to lower his voice.

And though she had anticipated it, Margaret let out a cry of shock and panic when Lyle fell against the wall, but quickly brought up a hand to cover her mouth. "Jarod!" she cried, her voice barely raised above a whisper, and then she heard voices that were the men's voices and she stared at her son in horror.

Jarod stared back at her in confusion, but she could not speak to tell him they were in danger: the men were too close. She reached out a hand for Jarod's and squeezed it.

"Don't scream!" Lyle breathed, clamping a hand over her mouth and pulling her backward, toward the wall.

Her eyes widened in terror, fixed to Jarod's own scared looking eyes, pleading him not to make a sound, not to let go of her hand.

The men in suits drew closer to where they stood by the wall, Lyle with his arms around her from behind as though he was merely hugging her, and Jarod clutching her hand as though it was his last lifeline, and now Margaret saw that they were not all men, that there were women with them, and that they were wearing suits too, and she wondered for an absurd moment if they were not just a group of accountants or doctors having just come from a meeting.

A tanned woman in her thirties in a cranberry-coloured skirt suit stopped close by and turned on the spot. Her expression became upset and she walked away, toward a group of people, two of the men in the group in their seventies; the slightly taller of the pair in a black suit, and the other – whose eyes were a mixture of blue and grey, though both men's eyes were blue – in a grey suit. The cranberry-suited woman spoke to the man in the black suit.

Margaret, her eyes fixed on the group, opened her mouth slightly to ask who they were, and realising that she could do so, that Lyle had taken his hand away from her mouth, changed her mind and closed her mouth again. The woman in the cranberry suit was staring in their direction.

Margaret noticed other, smaller groups of people returning to the group the woman in the cranberry suit was standing with, and realised that the man in the black suit seemed to be in charge. The man in the grey suit sighed and turned on the spot the way the cranberry-suited woman had earlier, his eyes scanning shops and walls and doors searchingly. He paused and considered the automatic door for a long moment, seeming to decide that whatever he had been looking for was not here, but out there, and turned back to the man in the black suit.

Margaret saw a mouth move and struggled to hear what was being said, but the voices were too far away to make out words.

The man in the grey suit shook his head and, seeming to lose interest in the new arrivals, turned his attention to the man in the black suit, his voice raised slightly when he spoke: "Lyle! He's not here!"

The man in the black suit ignored him.

"Lyle, be reasonable," the man in the grey suit reasoned.

The woman in the cranberry suit shot him a glare, which the man in the grey suit pretended not to have seen, and folded his arms across his chest.

"Lyle! Will you look at me?"

The man in the black suit finally turned to him, displeased.

The man in the grey suit frowned understandingly. "He's not here. Hmm?"

The man in the black suit looked at the woman in the cranberry suit.

"I'm sorry, sir," the woman replied, but the man had already dismissed her, and had walked away. The woman stood there and glared at nothing.

The man in the grey suit reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, but the woman wrenched her shoulder out of his reach with an air of finality, and the man returned his hands to his pockets, shaking his head.

The man in the black suit, seeming finally to have come to the same conclusion as the man in the grey suit, ordered that they were finished, and the men and women in suits made their way back toward the exits until finally there were none left, but for the occasional accountant or doctor or some other person wearing a suit.

Margaret squeezed Jarod's hand to reassure herself that he was still there, to reassure him that they were safe. His hand felt warm. She noticed, as she was about to demand that he do so, that Lyle had let go of her, and released Jarod's hand and turned to see Lyle sitting on the floor, staring at her legs, his eyes very wide. She realised that he probably wasn't staring at her legs, after all.

Jarod turned and saw Margaret, saw who Margaret was staring at. "We need to go," he said urgently.

Margaret looked at him.

Jarod held his hand out for hers.

Margaret took his hand, and the automatic doors closed on the mother and son as they stepped out of the arcade and crossed the road.

* * *

She had gone. Gone, and the children gone with her. Who did he think he was? If he was truthful and thought about it, he had not deserved the things he had been given. He had not fought when they had been taken away from him, as though he had known all along that he did not deserve them, he hadn't even tried. Over and over, he had repeated the same mistakes, and over and over, someone else had suffered.

But he was not upset. How could he be upset? It was suddenly all so clear. The way forward was suddenly clear.

He stood from the concrete back step, where he had been watching the stars, and turned and walked calmly into the house, and smiled as he thought of Jonathan and Sula, who had made him, and trusted that they had only been in love.

* * *

The airport lounge was too bright. It made Lyle's eyes sting and shine. He trembled all over. He could not stop. He felt so sick, so tired. He felt not right.

And then a new feeling came to him. And he fell down in front of the row of seats and cried, and his tears wet the material of the seat, but he no longer cared, because he knew something in him had failed, knew that he had failed – he was not spectacular!


	8. Chapter 8

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

The morning edition weather forecast that day had not promised rain, though grey clouds thickly padded the sky, making the world seem to glow, imbued in a strange misty almost-not light. Dull things became bright, and the bright things seemed less bright. It was as though the world had somehow turned upside down in the night and the world had woken to find it strange, inside out. A light stirring played in the air, an invisible mist that tickled Parker's skin and ruffled her hair.

She had only agreed to attend, she conceded, because she needed to know that he finally was gone. When she had first heard, she had been sure it was another manipulation, but now she was almost looking forward to confirming what she was fairly certain was the truth.

As she pulled her car into the parking lot, she was surprised to see Angelo sitting on one of the wooden partitions used to prevent cars from driving onto the lawn, and more surprised to see that he was sitting beside Lyle, and his carer and trainer, Dr. Merchant, sitting on the other side of Lyle and dressed in a blue dress and white high heels.

Once she had found a place to park her car, she walked across the parking lot to the wooden partitions that separated the bitumen parking lot from the cemetery lawn, wondering if Angelo was there for the same reason she was, and wondering why Merchant wasn't wearing black like everyone else, because now she had spotted another group of people standing by some parked cars: Sam, Midori, the small Japanese receptionist, and Cox, and Cox's nurses, Cherry, the slim, blonde one, and Plum, the busty, tanned one, both in their early thirties, Cherry probably no more than two years older than Plum.

Sydney and Broots were yet to arrive, she noticed as she made her way across the parking lot, and spied yet another group, chatting casually, of which she knew two of the doctors, Sims and Reston, and just pulling off the road and into the parking lot in his Chrysler Touring station wagon, the Tower doctor, Brown, who had been the Parker family doctor for the better part of twenty years. The Tower, Parker knew, had held more than a little dislike for Raines, as had been evidenced by their handing of Angelo over to Merchant, and by Raines's lack of any success with acquiring a new Empath.

She noticed, momentarily distracted, that Midori had started to cry and that Cherry and Plum had moved quickly to offer her comfort, and that she had started to apologise profusely to Sam, because it was his father's funeral, and that even when Sam told her that she needn't apologise, she turned away from him, and that Cox was staring at the ground.

"Angelo," Parker said kindly, stopping in front of him and tilting her head a little to the side to look at him, "I didn't think you would be here."

Merchant, as though the sound of someone talking had re-animated her, stood and glanced at Parker, then to Angelo. "I thought it would be best," she explained. "So that he would understand why he would not be seeing Raines at the Center any longer."

Angelo looked up at Parker, but did not lift his face enough to look into her own, and instead sat staring at a point of her black jacket very near to one of the buttons.

Lyle leant forward and looked around at Angelo. "Would you like to go for a walk?" he asked quietly, sounding even more so as though he were taken with a cold than usual, and smiled a little. "Hmm?" He touched Angelo's arm lightly.

Parker stood staring at them both, and was surprised when Angelo stood up, apparently deciding that he would like to go for a walk, and Parker and Merchant watched them walk away.

Merchant stepped a little closer and leant her head on Parker's shoulder, and in her shock, Parker stepped back, unable to catch and stop herself in time.

Merchant went on staring. "I'm sorry," she said, in that same voice she had used before, as though reciting a line that had been given to her. "I know you were close."

Before Parker could enquire as to whom Merchant thought she had been close to, the grubby blonde-haired woman walked away.

"Parker."

Parker turned at the familiar voice and noticed Sydney standing behind her, and Michelle, who looked as though she might have been crying, beside him. She did not see Nicholas anywhere, and decided that he must not have come.

"Hello, Sydney."

Sydney smiled.

A few minutes later, Parker and Sydney, who had been talking, were startled by Midori's loud shout. "You!" she half howled. "You should have done something! You shouldn't have let your sister talk to him like that! You should have stopped her!"

Parker noticed that Midori was no longer standing with the group she had been before, and that she was yelling at Lyle, who turned to Angelo and said something to him quietly.

"I am not her mother or her father," Lyle told Midori calmly, "and I am certainly not her keeper." Returning his attention to Angelo, he touched his arm, and Angelo turned around and started to walk over to where Parker and Sydney stood.

Midori laughed. "You wanted this to happen?" she shrieked wildly, a nasty note of accusation coming to her voice.

"I did not want this to happen," Lyle told her, as calmly as before.

Midori narrowed her black eyes. "_You should just die!_" she hissed in Japanese, before turning and stalking away.

Lyle turned back to the parking lot, toward where Angelo had walked, and started in the same direction.

Parker turned and looked at Angelo, who was standing with Michelle, her arms around him.

"Lyle!" Cox said, hurrying across the lawn toward Lyle.

Lyle stopped and looked at him. "Don't," he said. "Midori's right, I didn't do anything."

Cox stood and stared at him.

"Go, be her friend," Lyle told him, his voice returning to its earlier calm.

Cox slowly turned and walked away.

* * *

A man from the funeral company, who Parker wasn't listening to, was talking about Raines's work, that he would have had been Director for forty-one years in July, though the man probably had no idea what this meant, if it did at all, except that Raines seemed to have had the same job for forty years, which he probably supposed wasn't too bad, when he was interrupted by the sound of howling in the parking lot.

"No! I want to see my daddy!" a little voice howled, and Parker turned, along with many of the other people in the congregation, to see Raines's wife trying to keep hold of her daughter, Eddie, and the little boy, Dexter, standing close to her as though frightened by his year older sister's outburst.

Parker stared at the struggling little girl.

"He's my daddy and I love him!" she shouted at her mother. "You can't stop me from seeing him!" And finally, her mother let go of her, and the little girl flew backwards onto the hard bitumen, which made her cry, and Parker saw Lyle walk away, toward the parking lot and the little girl and her mother and brother, and then he had knelt down and he was talking to the little girl, and her mother had taken hold of the little boy's hand and turned away, and the little girl and Lyle stood up and walked back to the group standing around the grave.

When she drew nearer, Parker noticed that Eddie was no longer crying, and thought that she had probably forced herself not to, and that the child was standing very close to Lyle and didn't seem to want to look at anyone.

Lyle looked at the man, who was staring at the little girl in the bright clothes, as though she had just come from a special outing at a play centre, and nodded, and the man continued the talk.

* * *

Finally the congregation started to separate, people departing, until only Sam, Lyle, Eddie, and Parker were left. Parker watching Lyle and Eddie, and Sam staring at his father's grave, and then even Sam turned and walked away.

After a minute or two, Eddie stepped a little closer to the grave and sat down on the ground and picked up a handful of soil from the mound. "I love you, daddy," she told the mound in front of her earnestly, pushing the dirt in her hand around with a finger. "Dexter loves you too. And I think even Alvin will love you, even though he's not born yet. But when he is, I'm going to tell him all about you, I promise. I'll tell him all about you." She closed her hand tight over the little handful of dirt she had taken from the mound and stood up. "Daddy? I love you forever, and I'm sorry I was so bossy," she said, and turned and walked away, back to her mother and brother.

She had only walked a short distance when she turned around again and smiled at both Parker and Lyle, and then she turned and walked away to join her family.

Parker walked after her, not wanting to have to talk to Lyle or to have Lyle talk to her, and joined Sydney, Michelle, Broots and Debbie – in black and green, wearing a green knit cardigan she said her best friend had given her for her birthday – by Sydney's car, where the group decided they would drive to a little coffee shop Sydney knew for coffees.

Before she walked away, back toward her car, Debbie leant over and asked Parker if she would like her to run and ask her brother if he would like to join them.

"No," Parker told Debbie kindly.

* * *

The Director of Med Space pin lay on a sideboard in the kitchen, the light playing oddly across its surface and around the edges of the minute shadow it cast, and she just kept staring at it, knowing that he must have put it there before he had shot himself.

She hadn't even known he'd had a gun, though she had suspected that he'd had. Still, she hadn't _known_, and she wondered if it was the same gun he had used to kill Catherine Parker.

She walked to the bedroom and sat down on their bed, for a moment, not thinking about anything, her mind marvellously blank, and then her eyes travelled to the framed photograph that had been taken at their wedding, sitting unobtrusively on the nightstand beside the bed. She'd worn a strapless beige wedding dress with an intricate embroidered pattern in matching beige thread, and contrasting bronze thread, and a pair of delicate bronze and gold slippers, and he'd worn a dark brown suit, a bronze shirt and a black tie, and black dress shoes. She hadn't really thought that their outfits had matched, but she'd got the dress she had wanted, which she'd worn with her hair done up and staked with all sorts of pins and other things to keep it in place and a single white rose and frangipani, side by side.

The photographs had been taken in the closest local state forest, because it had turned out to be too expensive to have them taken where she had wanted them to be taken, on top of the cost of the photographer, so they'd had them taken in that awful state forest with its awful trees, sickly and muddy looking, even with the Christmas snow, and the horrid road that hadn't been properly signed to indicate the parking and picnic areas. She'd thought she was going to freeze to death out there, and she'd kept sliding on the snow in her slippers.

Of course, all that had been before the children had been born.

Strangely, she found herself leaning over and reaching out a hand that closed around the plain dark wooden frame she was sure was painted to look darker than the wood really was, and then the hand brought the frame toward her and she was staring at the photograph, at the white rose and frangipani in her hair, at their clasped hands – and she couldn't see the plain silver ring anywhere – at his blue eyes – they were just too blue – and the Director of Med Space pin pinned neatly to a lapel of his dark brown suit jacket.

She remembered that their wedding was the first time that he'd used her first name. How strange it had sounded, she recalled, and even now, how strange it would sound to hear him say that name – though she knew that he was dead – when he'd so often just addressed her as Fulton, though that was no longer her surname.

It had been the same with Eddie, she realised, and wondered when she, too, had started referring to their daughter, whose name was Edna Song Raines, as Eddie, at least in her mind. Dexter – whose full name was Dexter Garfield Raines – seemed, on the whole, not to have been appointed a shortened form or pet name by his father, though his sister, when the mood took her, often alternated between addressing him as Dex or Dexy. And then somehow, as she knew she would, she ended up thinking about the next child, whom she had decided to name Charlotte if it was a girl, or Alvin if it was a boy. She had been so angry at him all of the time, she had not even gotten around to telling her husband that she was pregnant, and now, she realised, she would not be able to tell him. She had even waited to chose the middle names for when she could ask him his first wife, Edna's parents' names, if he knew them, or his own parents' names, though she had been leaning toward using Edna's parents' names.

She placed the photograph down on the mattress and sat thinking about Sam, Parker, and Lyle, who no longer had a father either. They were the only family she, Eddie, and Dexter had now, though she was certain that Sam, at least, would want nothing to do with her, and that she wanted to have nothing to do with Lyle, nor for her children to have anything to do with him, though she knew he had a young son who was officially his brother. Though, officially, Mr. Parker was also Parker, Lyle, and the young boy's father.

She lay back on the mattress and stared at the white stars and dark blue sky painted across the ceiling, except for the little bit by the window where, the dark blue paint having ran out, the leftover baby blue that had been used in the children's room had had to be used.

Sam, she thought, might know the names of his mother's parents.


	9. Chapter 9

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

A young Asian woman was knelt on the floor. She looked like she wanted to cry. She was holding someone's hand. "_Let go!_" she pleaded in Japanese.

Lucy laughed chokingly. Let go and die! She screamed, screamed at the young woman. Shouldn't she have been telling her to hold on? Shouldn't she have been getting help! What was wrong with her? She started to plead. Help! Please help!

But all the young woman could do was tell her to let go. Over and over she repeated the same thing, and then she was crying.

Lucy realised the young woman was holding her hand, and that she had an identical cut on her own palm. She tried to think what this meant, but nothing came. God, help! She had to help! Open her eyes! Look at her! Snap out of her craziness! She was dying! HELP!

The young woman's voice became muffled and disappeared. Her tear stained face started to slide away and away. So far away now.

"Tell my family I love them," Lucy croaked. "Tell my daughter…" Her voice failed her, but she forgot to care, forgot everything.

The young woman squeezed her hand and held it tighter, but the blackness stole Lucy, who had never really been there at all, and Lyle found himself staring, eyes too wide, at the ceiling, his vision blurred strangely, coughing and trying to breathe.

"You idiot!" Tazu choked, still holding his hand, and when he finally looked at her she was faint, so faint. And then she too was gone.

He started to cry, but even that hurt. For a moment, he hated her, then he just hated himself.

* * *

He stared at the cut in his hand for a long time, stared at it as though he wasn't sure what it was – _"Everything's going to get better now," a soft voice told him_ – he tried to laugh, but he ended up coughing instead – _"I love you..."_ – it hurt, hurt a lot, and he realised that he probably needed a doctor. He continued staring at the cut, as he remembered all the doctors he'd ever known, and a strange thought popped into his head. _I kissed a boy. Kissed a dead boy_. He couldn't help it then. Had to laugh.

* * *

Brown stared at him, standing in the middle of the bright, white corridor on SL-8. He thought vaguely of speaking, but he couldn't make his mouth work.

Lyle stood ahead of him in the corridor looking as though he didn't really have anywhere to be, not lost, just there, watching him.

Brown wondered what Lyle would think if he just put his hands over his ears. The sound of Lyle's laboured breathing made him feel nauseous, the walls to either side of him, the ceiling with its bright lights that reflected off the floor, making it seem to shine, suddenly stifling, suddenly too close.

The blood seemed garish and unreal in the bright light, on his face, on his white shirt, on his hand, on the ends of his fingers.

Brown stared at him, standing there like that, and wondered if Lyle could tell how much he felt like being sick, if perhaps the colour had drained from his face, and after a while Lyle held out his right hand, showed him his palm.

"Cut my hand," he said.

Brown wanted to be sick then. He stepped back, away from Lyle, who did not respond at all, gazing steadily into his brown eyes, hand still held out in front of him, blood darkening the glowing floor where it fell. He could not think about the scars on Lyle's wrists, the scars in his palm, covered by blood; could not think about those old scars in his palm, re-opened; could not think about the _nothing_ in his voice, the simple statement of fact.

Brown did not consider himself squeamish, certainly not frightened by blood, but this was something else, this was something that could not be remedied with medication or an operation. This was psychological, and this was something that nobody but Lyle could overcome. Lyle was a strong person, but Brown wasn't certain this was something Lyle had any interest in healing, in overcoming.

Brown's chest tightened, heart quickening, all thoughts of sickness now abandoned. He could not put aside the thought that every time Lyle turned up with a cut in his hand, somewhere a young Asian woman turned up dead. "You should put pressure on that," he told Lyle evenly, and turned to show Lyle to one of the rooms where he could disinfect the cut in his hand and put some stitches in it.

* * *

Brown glanced at Lyle's face once he had finished the stitches. If he had just been pale, Brown would have assumed it was just the blood loss and having the stitches put in without any anaesthetic being administered, but by now Lyle was trembling, though he was trying very hard to fight it, covered in cold sweat.

Brown offered him a sweet from a plastic Ziploc bag in a pocket of his lab coat.

"No," Lyle said.

Brown took five of the gourmet jellybeans from the bag and put them in Lyle's left hand, then put the bag back in his pocket. "Go home," he told him, before walking out of the room.

* * *

Lyle cried in the cab on the way back to his apartment, then remembered that he still had three of the jellybeans Brown had given him, but they tasted salty from the tears that had run down his cheeks and into his mouth.

The cab driver said and asked nothing about him crying, and this only made him cry harder. He put the last jellybean in his mouth and wished Ethan was there. Ethan would have asked.

At the apartment, he couldn't sleep, so he sat down with a picture book and traced the drawing of an angel with a finger.

* * *

"He's not dead."

The voice startled Emily and she spun about. "What?" she asked.

"He's alive," June told her.

Emily shook her head. "I waited," she said, confused. She suddenly couldn't breathe.

"Where did you shoot him?" June asked.

"He was going to shoot me," Emily managed to say, taking deep breaths. "He had a gun."

June frowned.

Emily dropped her face to her handbag and dug around for a moment before she was able to retrieve her puffer.

June watched her silently.

Emily returned her puffer to her handbag, eyes watery, and glanced at June. "I shot him," she placed a hand on her chest, "here, and then I waited. He wasn't moving, so I left."

"You should have shot him in the head after he was down," June told her.

Emily put a hand up to her mouth.

June looked away from her, face grave. "I thought you wanted justice," she said quietly. "I see I was wrong."

"No!" Emily protested.

June turned and glanced at her.

Emily brushed at her eyes, upset. She sucked in a breath.

June shook her head and turned and walked away.

Emily watched her go and started to cry.


	10. Chapter 10

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

She had been waiting for Jarod to call, she remembered. But he hadn't. She sat and climbed out of bed and got ready for work. Her head hurt too much.

She hadn't slept well. She had been waiting for Jarod to call, she thought again. Her dreams had been full of screaming, full of howling, of small spaces, and nowhere to run. She remembered when she had hidden under her bed and listened to her mother sobbing, but that was not a real memory, so instead she thought of when she had been waiting for Raines in the elevator, but that was not real either, and suddenly it occurred to her that something was very wrong, because whilst she had been assured that the memory of hiding under her bed had been entirely fabricated, she had no memory of consciously fabricating the memory of meeting Raines in the elevator.

A sudden overriding fear clutched tight to her chest, squeezing ever tighter. The memory she had made, the memory she had thought she had mastered, had been the memory that had changed, just when she had thought she'd had it down, just when she'd thought she'd known how it had played out, but the memory of the elevator had not changed. The memory of the elevator had felt real, had not felt fabricated, controlled.

She was sure, for a moment, that her legs would give way, that she would be sick, that she would fall, but she did not sit. She would not sit! That had not happened to her! She had _made_ it up! She felt herself shaking, her legs shaking. She could very well have been remembering a _real_ event, she realised, could have been remembering something that had happened to her but that she had forgotten, had put out of her mind. The feeling of sickness threatened to overwhelm her. The memory she had thought she had made up might have been a real memory she had forced herself to forget but that had resurfaced, distorted, confused! She stumbled to the bathroom and was sick.

Afterwards, she sat with her back to the hard bathroom wall, and remembered the way Lyle had been looking at her. Because he was just like Raines! Because he had realised that what she had been shouting had really happened! She pushed herself to her feet and was sick again.

* * *

She walked toward the elevator, the same way she always walked, but when the doors closed, she sunk to the floor in the corner and fought back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.

She didn't want to believe she had been… hurt… that way. Just the thought of the word – _raped_ – repulsed and angered her. She didn't know how she could ever tell anyone she had been sexually abused. She couldn't even say the word out loud, for God's sake!

She forced her mouth open, forced herself to say the word… but no sound came out, she was only mouthing the word. She was ridiculous and pathetic!

She was suddenly on her feet. She felt dizzy, sick. "I WAS RAPED!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, and the sound reverberated around the carriage so that she was sure that when she stepped out of the elevator she would be deaf.

* * *

She found Sydney at his desk, arguing into the telephone, his voice irritated. He was on his feet, weight rested on a hand rested on the desk, glaring down at his desk.

Parker stepped into the office, deciding that even if she did knock, he probably wouldn't hear her. He hadn't, after all, heard her open the door. She felt strangely numb, considering what she was about to do, considering what she was about to tell Sydney.

"Get off the telephone! Obviously you are not fit for such a job!" Sydney yelled at the phone, and then laughed. A moment later, he slammed the telephone down.

Parker supposed the person on the other end had hung up on him.

Glaring, Sydney looked up and noticed her standing there. A look of discomfort quickly crossed his face, but was quickly dropped. "Good morning, Miss Parker," he said blandly.

"I-" Parker began, but she couldn't get the rest of the words out. _Two lousy words!_ she shouted, infuriated beyond control, inside her mind. "Nasty," she commented, in the same bland voice as Sydney.

Sydney shook his head and turned to the bookshelf behind his desk. He sighed, and turned back around. He laughed. "Yes."

"I'll come back later," Parker told him.

Sydney frowned suddenly, but Parker lifted a hand – it was okay – and Sydney nodded. He would be waiting.

* * *

She walked back to the elevator and hit the button for Tech Space, SL-5. She knew she should be working – probably should have been yelling at someone on the other end of the telephone – but she couldn't think about work, didn't feel like working. She felt strangely separate from the world. There was no anger, the way there had been before, made-up anger. There was no anger at Raines for what he had done – she had always been so angry at him – only anger at herself for not being able to admit it – unbearable, numbing anger. She wondered if she was asleep and still dreaming, if maybe Jarod would ring and wake her from her strange dream.

* * *

She made herself a coffee at the coffee machine in Heathrow Lounge and sunk into one of the sofas, coffee cooling on a low table in front of her. She wondered who Sydney had been talking to, who he had been so angry at. _Probably a secretary,_ she thought.

"Sis?" a sick voice pulled her from her thoughts.

Slowly, she looked around.

Lyle stood watching her and frowned.

Parker wished he would go away, or just die. She wanted to drink her coffee.

"I think it should be you," Lyle said, still watching her.

"What should be me?" Parker demanded suddenly.

Lyle frowned again.

Parker pushed herself to her feet. "What?" she demanded.

"The Tower are re-evaluating the Acting Chairman's position. I suppose they're thinking about appointing… someone more permanent. I think it should be you."

Parker stared at him.

"I hope you'll at least think about it," he said, before turning and walking out.

Parker stared at nothing for a long moment. "What does that mean?" she demanded, running out into the corridor so that she could see him again at the end of the corridor.

Lyle turned back at the corner. "What does what mean?" he asked.

"More permanent?" Parker stormed.

Lyle smiled, and turned and walked around the corner.

Parker remembered her coffee and walked back to Heathrow Lounge.

* * *

Sydney was standing in front of her, talking to her, telling her how a Tower official had left a message that he ring him back, and that when he had he'd gotten the secretary – a pause, in which he refrained from insulting the secretary's ability to do her job – anyway, he'd tried again, gotten the Tower official the second time.

Parker listened patiently, but Sydney had stopped talking.

After a long moment, Sydney said: "I think they want me to apply for the upcoming opening in the Chairman's position."

Parker stared. She didn't know what to say. She hadn't even known that the Tower was considering appointing a new Chairman until Lyle had come to tell her that he thought it should be her. "What do you think?" she asked.

Sydney made a face. "I'm much too old for all that now," he told her.

Parker frowned at him.

"I don't know about you, but I thought you should consider applying," Sydney told her, after some time.

Parker looked around the room absently. "I haven't got the memo yet," she told him.

"I imagine that you will, at some point. When they have decided for certain that they are appointing a new Chairman."

"I suppose," Parker said.

"I can't even think about Lyle becoming the Chairman," Sydney told her uncomfortably.

Parker smiled. "I will if you do," she said.

Sydney stared at her, dumbstruck.

Parker laughed. "I mean it," she told him, getting to her feet and walking across the room toward the automatic doors and Broots' workstation. It was time she did some work, or at least made sure someone was.

* * *

She was standing in the elevator. She was screaming. The sound made her want to cry and she didn't know why she was trying to remember that at all.

Raines seemed to take in the screaming, and winced. He reached out his hands and took hold of her upper arms.

She didn't try to stop him. She wondered why that was.

"Mel," Raines said, and she noticed that he still had his British accent and wondered why he'd had it at all. As far as she knew, he'd never even been to England, and he certainly hadn't lived there. "Mel," he implored a second time, but the girl would not be stopped screaming. Raines put a hand over her mouth.

For a moment, the girl seemed stunned, and then she backed sharply out of Raines' reach and came up against the wall behind her.

"What would you have had me do, Melody?" Raines asked her, and, for a moment, all she could think was how very pale his eyes looked. He started to cough and turned away from her.

She pushed herself further into the wall. Wide eyes fixed to his back, she whispered: "You should have let her die!"

In her office, Parker gasped. The memory threatened to slip away, but she forced herself to stay focussed.

Back in the elevator, Raines turned swiftly and stared at her.

She pushed herself off the wall and took slow, deliberate steps toward him, eyes narrowed. "You should have let her die!" she snarled. "She'll never learn, the way you're going about it! She'll never stop! Don't you get it?" And then she was screaming. "YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HER DIE! YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HER GO SO SHE WOULD KNOW WHAT I FEEL LIKE!"

Raines could only stand there and stare at her in shock.

"YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HER DIE, YOU BASTARD!" she hollered, and she was hitting him, over and over again. "You bastard! You bastard! You bastard!"

Eventually, he put his arms around her and held her tight, and she stopped screaming. And then the doors opened. He didn't say anything to her, but he dropped his arms, and she ran out of the elevator.

Parker choked as the memory dissolved around her. Tears welled in her eyes. She didn't understand the memory at all. And now she had no one to ask about it.

* * *

"She's killing you, don't you see that!" she hissed, standing in the door to his office. "Look at yourself! Do you honestly think that anyone was meant to be able to do what you do?" She laughed horribly, stepped into the office, and kicked the door shut behind her.

"There are plenty of people who do exactly what I do for your mother – everyday," Raines told her calmly, standing behind his desk.

"Bullshit!" she spat.

He crossed his arms. "I understand that you're upset. That you feel betrayed."

She started screaming again.

"Stop screaming!" Raines told her sharply. "You're not a baby. If you expect anyone to take notice of you – you can use words."

She glared, clenching her jaw.

"She's sick, Mel," Raines told her honestly. "More sick than you can know. She needs your understanding and support, not your hatred. It may be that she'll never get any better than how she is right now, or maybe she will, but she will never be _perfect_!"

"Why?" the girl snarled.

Raines shook his head.

"I DON'T WANT HER TO BE SICK!" the girl screamed.

"I know, Mel. I know. I don't want her to be sick, either. But she is."

And suddenly the girl started to cry. "How can I love her when she doesn't even love herself?" she whined.

Raines moved around his desk and walked up to her and put his arms around her. "She loves you, Melody," he told her. "I promise you that she loves you. Just love her back."

"Why won't she stop?" the girl choked, hugging him tighter.

"I'm sorry, Mel. I'm so sorry."

She sniffed, tears pouring down her face, and choked again. "Promise you'll never leave me," she whispered, voice breaking in the middle.

"I won't leave you, Mel," Raines said.

She lifted her face to meet his eyes. "Promise it!"

"I promise I won't leave you, Melody."

"No matter what!"

"No matter what," Raines assured her.

"Not even for her!" she whispered, her voice too quiet.

Raines took a deep breath. Finally, he said: "Not even for Catherine, I promise."

* * *

Parker forced herself onto her feet. She felt like she was going to be sick. She remembered the strange feeling she had had earlier, when Lyle had come to see her in Heathrow Lounge, and she had seen the cut on his hand. And now she knew what the feeling had been. _Not again!_ Remembered how Catherine had cut herself. At first, her wrists, then her arms, and then – as if she thought they wouldn't notice – her legs. Remembered how Raines had made them go away, and how his eyes had gone pale, paler even than they usually were. Remembered how she had stayed with the Raines family for six out of seven days a week – except for Tuesdays, when she had gone for home for dinner and to sleep over – until she was four, until Catherine had got mad at Edna Raines, had yelled at her that she wasn't going to kill her baby too! And then she was just supposed to stop thinking about these people she had grown up knowing, stop thinking that Annie was her friend, her sister, because their families weren't friends anymore. Remembered the imaginary friend she'd made to take Annie's place, except that he'd been a boy, and he hadn't really been imaginary at all, because he'd made her momma stop shaking her – she'd felt hot just under her skin and her momma had let go of her – but then her momma heard her talking to him, and she'd told her daddy, and they'd given her pills, and her imaginary friend had left her too, just like William, just like Edie, just like Annie. But then she'd been taken off the pills, and she'd pleaded, she'd pleaded and prayed and cried, for him to please, just please come back – she'd made a special room inside her head where her momma couldn't hear them talking – but he hadn't come back. He must have been mad at her for leaving. She told him over and over that it wasn't her fault, the grown-ups had made her take those pills, she hadn't wanted to leave _him_! But he wouldn't listen, wouldn't come back, so she vowed to do just the same, vowed that she would never let him come back, wouldn't even listen, and so she didn't listen, and he never came back. And then her momma started to cut herself.

Parker wrapped her arms around her middle and told herself that it didn't matter, that Lyle didn't matter, because he wasn't even her _real_ brother, because even if he really was her real brother, he wasn't someone who mattered to her.

And suddenly, she remembered Raines telling her that he wasn't her father. She'd called him 'da,' the way Annie did, and he'd sat her down and told her that he wasn't her father. She'd poked her tongue out at him, and he'd said: "I'm William. I'm your friend." She'd smiled. "Are you my friend?" he'd asked, smiling. And she'd nodded.

She remembered seven-year-old Annie, standing, watching this, arms crossed. "No, da," she'd said. "She's a spy. So, are you embezzling money from the company, or what?"

Raines had laughed and replied: "Or what."

And then she had forgotten them.

Parker found her chair and fell down into it. She wondered if Annie had been the same, if Annie had been what her father had been – a Healer – if Annie had been a Healer too. Oh God, how could someone have hurt her! She'd been so beautiful! She'd been so beautiful inside!

She started to cry. In the end, it had been her who had broken that promise, because despite everything he had done, he had not left her, until she had asked him to.

What would she tell Sydney now? _I love you. Don't leave me. Talk to me. Don't let me push you away. Argue with me. Close this distance between us. Hold me. Just hold me._

* * *

Emily finally found the table. She frowned in annoyance and slipped into a seat across the table. Lyle had his head rested on his arms. "Are you awake?" she asked loudly.

Lyle sat up suddenly. "Yeah," he replied. "I am now."

Emily made a face at him.

Lyle rubbed the side of his face with his right hand, frowning, and peered across the table at her. "Your mom's not mad at me, is she?" he asked.

Emily stared at him.

He laughed, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. "Forget I asked," he told her and rubbed his face again.

"So, the Tower's looking for a new Chairman for Blue Cove," Emily commented.

Lyle snickered. "You actually think they're going to consider me?" he asked, amused.

"Why not? You seem like a guy who gets things done," Emily told him.

Lyle made a face at her. "You should really be saying things like that, Russell! You're a genius!"

Emily scowled.

Lyle laughed. "You should see the look on your face!"

Emily laughed back at him, mock amused. She stood up. "I'm going to the bathroom," she told him.

Lyle grinned. "Aren't you wowwied I'm gonna wing the Sweepers whilst you're busy… fixing your make up…?" he asked, and laughed.

Emily marched around the table and grabbed his arm.

"You want me to hold your hand, baby?" Lyle joked.

Emily glared at him.

Lyle got to his feet, brushing her hand from his arm. "Gettin' a bit too touchy feely, aren't we?" He smiled. "You're not gonna shoot me again?" he asked.

Emily said nothing and turned and stalked off.

Lyle sighed heavily and followed her.

* * *

Emily turned away from the mirror where she had been touching up her lip gloss.

"Wanna write on the toilet doors?" Lyle asked, leant against the wall beside the automatic hand drier.

Emily narrowed her eyes at him in a glare and returned her lip gloss to her purse.

Lyle switched the automatic hand drier off at the power point on the wall.

Emily walked over and switched it back on.

"You're mean," Lyle told her, looking hurt.

Emily watched him, unimpressed. "Touch me," she told him.

Lyle looked around the room to make sure no one had just walked in or no one was hiding in one of the cubicles who might see them together, leaned forward and grabbed her hand and grinned.

Emily contemplated slapping him.

"I have a bathroom too," he told her, swinging her hand around.

Emily pulled her hand out of his and glared.

Lyle closed his eyes and started to hum.

"What are you doing?" Emily asked, annoyed.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. "Dance with me?"

Emily snorted and took a sharp step backward.

"Don't make me ask your father."

Emily laughed. "You don't know where my father is!" she spat.

Lyle grinned. "Come on, Russell, dance with me," he whined. "Promise not to get angry if you step on my feet."

Emily walked over and stomped on his shoe.

Lyle laughed.

Emily glared, crossing her arms.

He stopped laughing. "Get you a drink?" he asked, seriously.

* * *

At the bar, Lyle ordered a strawberry milkshake for Emily – at which the bartender gave him a funny look; in case he had failed to notice, this was a bar, where they sold alcoholic drinks – and a vodka for himself.

Emily didn't ask how Lyle knew she liked strawberry milkshake, but just glared at him over her milkshake when it arrived with a straw and in a tall glass that made her fingers cold when she held it, and turned away to walk back to the table they had left earlier, to find that it had been taken in their absence. She turned back to Lyle to find that he had taken a seat at the bar and was coughing. She sat down at a stool beside him and sipped her milkshake through her straw, watching the barman.

Lyle rested his head on her shoulder. She almost jumped off her barstool. "Why won't you dance with me?" he asked.

"I'm drinking my milkshake," she told him.

"Do you still like strawberry, or should I have gotten chocolate or something else instead?" he asked.

"You can get your head off my shoulder," Emily told him.

He took his head off her shoulder and sat up properly. He laughed. "Should have just asked," he remarked to no one.

Emily narrowed her eyes and pushed him in the arm. "You better not have asked that barman to put anything in my drink!" she told him. "You know, winked at him funny."

Lyle winked at her.

Emily looked away from him.

Lyle touched her arm.

She shot him a quick glare.

"You said I should touch you," he told her.

"Not my arm!" she growled.

"Why not your arm?"

Emily turned and glared at him properly. "Do you want my milkshake on you?" she asked.

Lyle shook his head.

"Then stop touching my arm!" she growled, and went back to watching the barman.

Lyle started humming. "This is great," he commented to himself. He closed his eyes and hummed to himself.

"Are you mad?" Emily asked, without turning.

Lyle smiled. "That's what they say," he replied.

"What are you humming?" she growled after a moment, turning to glance at him.

He opened his eyes. "I like this song," he told her.

"What's the name?" Emily rephrased.

"_Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White_."

Emily laughed. Her parents probably liked that song!

"My wife used to like all of those Disney songs," Lyle told her, and looked away from her. "You know, _Cinderella_, _Snow White_."

Emily slipped off her barstool and walked off. She didn't want to hear that! She stopped and turned back to the bar. She walked back over and placed her milkshake down at the bar. "Take me home," she told him coldly.

"Finish your milkshake," he told her, and walked away.

Emily glared after him. "Where are you going?" she shot angrily.

"Nowhere," he told her without turning.

Emily snorted. Yeah, sure!

Lyle turned back and grinned. "I'm ringin' the Sweepers," he told her. "Run!"

Emily showed him her finger.

He laughed and turned away again.

Emily sat back down at stool she had been sitting at before and sipped her milkshake, hoping he was not actually ringing the Sweepers.

* * *

"You didn't drink that much," Emily told him, annoyed, sitting in the backseat of the cab next to Lyle.

Lyle didn't say anything, but watched the darkened side window.

Emily folded her arms across her chest, suddenly cold in the cab, and watched the window on her side. She was crazy! She had to be!

* * *

Emily stood at the door, shifting her weight from foot to foot and waiting for Lyle to open the door.

Inside the apartment, Lyle glanced at her. "Would you like a coffee?" he asked.

"Might as well," Emily replied, frowning at the penguin sitting on the sofa. "What is with that thing anyway?" she asked.

Lyle turned to see what she was looking at. "That's Sydney," he told her. "How many sugars?"

"Three," she replied. "Black." She looked away from the penguin. "Your wife's?"

"Sorta." He walked out of the room.

Emily followed him into the kitchen. "What did she do that was so bad?" she asked, watching him fill an electric kettle under the tap at the sink. Lyle didn't say anything, so she looked around the kitchen, wondering why he didn't have a coffee machine. When she looked back, Lyle had turned away from one of the cupboards, and offered her a biscuit from an opened packet. Emily noticed that none of the biscuits had been eaten yet. She took a Monte Carlo and chewed on the edge of it.

"What's your favourite colour?" Lyle asked, placing the packet of biscuits down at the table.

"What's yours?" Emily replied.

"Green."

Emily made a face. "Yellow." If his favourite colour was green, then hers wasn't anymore.

Lyle turned away and set about retrieving the coffee plunger and the ground coffee from one of the cupboards.

"What are we doing?" Emily asked.

Lyle turned back to her and frowned.

Emily shook her head. "What am I doing?"

"Are you asking me?" Lyle asked uncertainly.

Emily stared at him for a moment, and shook her head again. She had no idea what she was doing here with him! It wasn't going to make things better with Ray. He was remarried. She took another biscuit, a chocolate one this time.

Lyle was still watching her.

"I'm waiting for my coffee," she told him, annoyed, taking another biscuit, something with white cream in the middle. She heard the water finish boiling and took a seat at the table and reached across for another biscuit, a Ginger Snap. "So who named it Sydney?" she asked, watching the biscuit packet. When Lyle didn't answer, she looked up and glanced at him.

He walked over and placed her mug of coffee on the table in front of her. "It was the name on the tag that came with it."

Emily made a face and pulled her mug of coffee toward her, dipping another of the cream biscuits in her coffee. She bit the end of the biscuit off. "I would have named it Ovid," she told him, dipping her biscuit in her coffee again.

"Why?"

Emily looked up at him and frowned. "Are you serious?"

Lyle shrugged.

"Sydney? Your sister works with a Sydney, doesn't she?"

"Yeah."

Emily took another biscuit. "Nothing. Aren't you having a coffee?"

Lyle nodded and walked around the table.

* * *

"Do you have olives?" Emily asked, glancing across the table at Lyle.

"No," he replied.

Emily looked back to her coffee.

"Why?" Lyle asked. "You weren't going to put them in your coffee too, were you?"

Emily laughed. "No." She took a biscuit from the packet in the middle of the table.

* * *

Emily placed her empty mug in the sink and walked over to Lyle. "So, you can touch my arm if you want," she told him, holding out her folded arm.

Lyle looked up at her. He pushed his chair out and stood up.

Emily smiled. She'd never been to any of those school dances.

* * *

Lyle put a CD on, something instrumental, and together, they moved the sofa and small coffee table across the room against the wall. The CD was at about the third song by then.

"Did your wife like dancing?" Emily asked, concentrating on keeping in time with the music and not stepping on Lyle's feet.

"I don't know," Lyle replied. "We didn't dance much. Do you like dancing?"

"I would if I got to step on your feet more often," Emily told him.

Lyle stopped abruptly and she trod on his shoe.

"You made me do that!" she gasped.

He smiled.

She looked away from him for a moment and stared at the wall, and the song changed. "This is what you were humming," she said after a while, when they were dancing again.

Lyle didn't say anything.

* * *

"Your bathroom's kind of lame," Emily told him, walking into the room and over to the basin, where she hauled herself up and sat down.

"It has a spider," Lyle said.

Emily leapt off the basin.

Lyle pointed to a large black painting of a spider on the wall which Emily hadn't noticed.

Emily walked over and punched him in the arm. "I thought you meant a real spider!" she told him, upset. "And that's creepy."

Lyle shrugged and looked at the painting. He didn't think it looked creepy.

Emily made a face at him, and looked around the room. "Why doesn't your bathroom have a bath?" she asked.

"I don't know," Lyle replied. "Maybe too many people tried committing suicide in it or something, so they took it out."

Emily stared at him. "You're worse than the spider," she told him.

Lyle looked away from the spider painting and looked at her. "The woman who gave you the gun," he said, "she works for the Tower. I'm sorry. You can't trust her."

Emily stared at him. She wanted to slap him.

"Do you understand?" Lyle asked, peering into her face. "You can't trust her."

"What are you talking about?" Emily shouted, her voice suddenly too loud so that it hurt her ears.

"My family is your family, Emily," Lyle told her. "You can't trust her with our family, that's what I'm talking about. She might have helped you once before, but she's not above hurting and kidnapping your family, or even you, if the job calls for it. The same goes for any one of us, Emily. You must understand that. None of us are particularly good people, but some of us are… more feeling… than some of the others. That doesn't mean we don't still have a job to do at the end of the day. You can understand that, can't you?"

Emily stormed out of the room before she actually slapped him.

"Emily, tell me her name."

"Fuck you!" Emily shouted, not bothering to turn around.

Lyle caught her up and grabbed her arm, spinning her around to face him. "A name," he told her, "that's all I want, and you can go home to your family, safe and sound." He let go of her arm.

"You're a bastard!" Emily spat.

"And then some," Lyle agreed. "Just tell me the name."

"They're not your family!" Emily growled.

"Mirage is my brother," Lyle said.

Emily laughed hysterically, as though what he had just said had said everything to her. "His name is Ethan, you bastard!" she screamed. "And he's my brother too! He's not even your full brother!"

"And I suppose I'm not your little boy's father either," he said.

Emily glared at him for half a second, and then she slapped him and turned and ran.

"Nice, Russell," Lyle commented. He didn't try to chase after her, he just stood there for a moment, then walked back to the bathroom, where the light had been left on.

* * *

At 4 A.M., Ethan rang. Parker answered with her customary answer: "What?" And heard Ethan's confused response.

"It's Ethan."

"Can I tell you something?" she asked.

"Okay," Ethan replied, as confused as before.

"I love you, Ethan," Parker told him.

Ethan didn't say anything for a long moment, and then he said: "Thanks. I guess." After another moment, he added: "I love you too…"

Parker smiled. "Thanks. I guess," she told him.

Ethan laughed. "Are you, you know, okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay," Parker told him.

"Are you… I heard the Tower is looking for a new Chair... thing… person… Are you going to… maybe… ask for an interview… or something?"

"Heard from Jarod, I suppose?" she asked.

"Yeah, I suppose," Ethan replied.

Parker laughed. "Sydney thinks I should," she confided. "So I think I might." She smiled, as though she thought Ethan could see, or maybe hear it in her voice. "And you think I should." She imagined that Ethan smiled on the other end of the phone. "How's Emily?"

"Okay, I guess," Ethan replied. "A bit down."

"Lyle thinks I should too," Parker told him, without knowing why.

"Thinks you should what?" Ethan questioned, confused.

"You know, ask for an interview or something," Parker said.

"Why?" Ethan asked.

Parker blinked. "I don't know."

"That's stupid," Ethan said.

"What?" Parker asked.

"Well, I think you should," Ethan continued. "He wants you to be upset when you lose out. He thinks it'll be him." He laughed harshly.

"I won't be upset," Parker told him. "I just won't lose." She smiled.

"If it's him, I'll kill him myself!" Ethan told her.

"You will not!" Parker admonished him, still smiling.

Ethan laughed, and suddenly the sound scared her.

She forced herself to laugh it off. "I love you," she said again, feeling her voice shake, and hoped Ethan put it down to the laughter.

"I love you more," Ethan replied.

She laughed, tears welling in her eyes. "It's late," she told him, afraid she would start crying. "Goodnight, brother."

"Goodnight," Ethan said.

Parker pressed the button to end the call and placed her cell phone, hands shaking, on the nightstand beside her bed.

If what she thought had happened hadn't happened, if what she had shouted had happened hadn't happened, then she wondered why Lyle had been looking at her like that, if maybe now he thought it had happened, if that was why he'd suddenly said she should try for Chairmanship, if it was because he felt guilty, because he was her brother and he hadn't stopped them for hurting her, hadn't stopped Raines from hurting her, which made no sense to her, because back then she hadn't been his sister, back then he hadn't even known that she existed, or maybe he felt guilty because of the way he always acted towards her. The thought made her want to laugh, because Lyle didn't feel guilty, not even for killing his best friend, who'd been – well – his best friend.

She lay down and stared up at the ceiling. No, it was something else, she decided, and wondered if if that was true – if Lyle really had thought that had happened to her – if that was why he hadn't talked to Raines. She dismissed the idea. If Lyle hadn't talked to Raines for any reason, it was because he had seen the way things had been going, and he had wondered, if, for the first time in thirty-three years, he could finally be free of Raines, finally be allowed to do what he wanted to do.

She closed her eyes.

* * *

Emily was sitting at a bus stop, waiting for the six o'clock bus. She had stopped shivering half an hour ago, her muscles were too tired.

Lyle walked over and sat down on the bench beside her. "Come back with me. It's too cold out here."

Emily said nothing, didn't even look around at him when he spoke to her.

"Here, I brought you Sydney." He placed the penguin in her lap.

She knocked it onto the concrete. "I don't want your wife's stupid stuffed fucking animal!" she ground.

"My daughter's," Lyle corrected. "He wasn't my wife's, he was my daughter's. I gave him to my wife when our daughter was born. He was for our daughter. She was the one who named him Sydney."

Emily said nothing, but didn't kick the penguin onto the road like she had been planning. Lyle didn't have a daughter, he was lying to her!

Lyle stood and picked the penguin up. "I'll make you a coffee, hmm? Just come back with me. This is ridiculous."

"Fuck off," Emily told him.

"No, come on."

Emily said nothing.

Lyle walked over and stood in front of her. "I'm cold. I don't want to have to stand here all night."

Emily wasn't talking.

"I'll take you to breakfast. I know an all-nighter that will be open. I really want to go, I'm hungry. And you can't just eat biscuits, that isn't healthy." He sat down again, next to her. "You wanna say something?" he asked. "Hey?" He touched her arm.

She brushed his hand off her arm.

"Come on, Russell. I think the cold's starting to make me hallucinate. Did you just touch me?"

Emily shuffled away from him on the bench.

Lyle put his hand over hers on the bench and stood up. "Okay, you're gonna have to start calling me names again," he told her, pulling her up off the bench and into his arms.

"Let me go!" Emily growled, struggling.

"Can't," Lyle told her.

"Let go of me!"

"You forget somethin', girl? Crazy boy."

"Let me go!"

"Sydney says I shouldn't listen to suicidal girls."

Emily shrieked. "No! Put me down!"

"Don't think so, crazy girl," Lyle told her.

"Sydney's dead!" Emily promised.

Lyle ignored her and started humming Rob Thomas' _When the Heartache Ends_.

"I hate that song!" Emily growled.

* * *

Lyle put her down in front of the door.

Emily glared at him, tugging her tee shirt down with her hands. "You and that penguin are mad!" she informed him.

Lyle shot her a winning smile.

Emily made a face at him, straightening the hair of her blonde wig with her fingers.

"How are you feelin'?" Lyle asked her, once they were inside. "You feelin' okay?"

Emily scowled.

"You look fine," Lyle told her, walking into the kitchen.

Emily stalked after him and sat down at the kitchen table, taking a handful of biscuits from the packet on the table. She stood up and walked out of the kitchen and sat down on the sofa and closed her eyes, eating the biscuits she had brought with her from the other room. She heard Lyle coughing in the other room and opened her eyes. When the coughing didn't stop, she got to her feet and walked into the kitchen.

Lyle was sitting on the floor against the cupboards, eyes watery.

Emily watched him for a moment.

"Could you pour me a glass of water, please?" he asked, voice scratchy and sick-sounding. When she didn't move or say anything, he looked up at her with his too watery eyes. "Would you do that for me, please?" he asked.

Emily walked to the kitchen sink and poured water into a glass she had taken from the draining board, then turned back around and walked over and bent down to give the glass to him.

"Thank you," Lyle told her.

Emily said nothing.

He drank half of the water and placed the glass down on the floor beside him.

"My husband married another woman," Emily told him. "I think her name is Claire. They have a three-year-old son."

"I think you mean ex-husband, darl," Lyle said, pushing himself to his feet.

Emily stepped forward quickly and took his arms to steady him. "You should sit down," she told him.

"If I sit down, would you do me a huge favour and run to the bathroom and bring me all of the bottles with Dr. Brown on the label?" Lyle asked her. "Only, you don't have to run if you don't want to."

Emily nodded, and pulled a chair away from the table toward them. "Just sit down. I'll be back with those bottles." She walked out of the kitchen quickly.

* * *

In the bathroom, she found twenty-two different bottles with Dr. Brown on the labels. She took them all and walked out of the bathroom.

"Which ones do you need?" she asked Lyle, dumping them down on the kitchen table and standing them upright, one by one.

Lyle took one of the bottles with only the doctor's name, Dr. Brown, the Center's cross-like insignia, and a date stamp.

Emily frowned. "Maybe you should go to a hospital," she told him.

Lyle snorted. "Hate hospitals," he told her. "Only go to hospitals to die. Grandma Lorelei died in a hospital." He made a sound in the back of his throat, brushed at his eyes in annoyance.

Emily turned away from the bottles she had been turning around so that the front of the labels faced her and stared at him. "Here." Emily held out her hand for the bottle.

Lyle handed it to her, but it dropped to the floor.

Emily bent down to pick it up.

Lyle stared, confused, at the space in front of him.

Emily placed the bottle down on the table, unopened. She could just walk away now. She didn't know what was wrong with him, but he didn't look very well. She could just walk away. She turned back to the table and pushed all of the little pill bottles across the table. They fell to the floor, pitter-patter, and rolled about across the floor. She left the table and walked across the room to the refrigerator.

She stared at the two bottles of cherry-flavoured soda in the fridge door, the photograph of three small children taped to the door above the bottles, two little girls and a little boy each with the same tan, the same dark hair, the two girls in school uniforms and no more than six and five, a year between them at the most, and the little boy, bright yellow Crocs on his feet, four years old. She had no idea who the children were. She looked away from the photograph and looked at the rest of the items in the refrigerator, all standard things one expected to find in a refrigerator, and four boxes of Belgian chocolates from a place called Confectionary Cove, according to the bright sticker on the top of the first box, and no olives. She shut the refrigerator door and opened the door to the freezer. Chips, chips, chips, ice cream. She took the ice cream out of the freezer and placed it on the top of the refrigerator. She took the little clear plastic container from the back of the freezer and stared at the contents, deciding that they were a man's fingers. The index finger and middle finger from the left hand, she supposed. She put the little container in the back of the freezer and replaced the plastic tub of ice cream, then took it back out and opened the lid. Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream, as the lid promised. She put the ice cream back, and took the chips out and placed them on the top of refrigerator. More of the same chocolates from the refrigerator section, an envelope addressed to a woman named Jules. She took the envelope out of the freezer and replaced the chips and shut the freezer door, wondering if maybe the fingers belonged to Jules' brother or boyfriend or cousin, or someone else she had known, a friend maybe.

She turned away from the refrigerator and noticed that Lyle was lying on the floor. She walked out of the room with Jules' letter.

She walked to the lounge room and sat down at the sofa against the wall and picked the picture book off the coffee table against the wall next to the sofa and lifted her sneakers onto the sofa and sat back to read the picture book. When she had finished the book, she stood up and dropped it onto the sofa and walked out of the lounge room. She switched the bathroom light off on her way past and walked across the bedroom to the bed and lay down and stared up at the ceiling. She sat up and walked to the wardrobe and looked through the clothes and things. She shut the wardrobe door and opened the drawers on the chest of drawers. Picture books in the first drawer, picture books in the second, pill bottles and needles and other little bottles in the third, a half empty bottle of vodka, product of Sweden. She left the bedroom.

A desktop computer in the second bedroom that had been converted into a study, several external hard drives for more storage. A laptop computer, bookshelf of books, locked filing cabinet, boxes of papers filled with a child's neat handwriting, more boxes filled with clear plastic cards thicker than a credit card but the same size, children's toys, perhaps. A framed photograph at the desk: sister, dead mother. She stopped at the door, turned back and packed up the laptop in its case with its cables and pulled the door shut after her.

She walked back to the kitchen and glanced at Lyle. He stared at her with too wide eyes. She turned and walked back out of the kitchen before she had the urge to shoot him with his own gun.

* * *

As she walked, the sun rose around her, and she sat down at the bus stop, sunlight on her cheeks, fingering the letter in her hands. A long time later, she placed the laptop case down on the bench beside her and opened the slightly soggy envelope with a finger.

"Are you Jules?" a voice asked, annoyed.

Emily started and looked up.

Lyle leant forward and snatched the envelope from her. "Oh, I'm seeing it, Emily. I'm totally seeing it!" he told her.

Emily glared at him, clutching the laptop case to her chest. "I don't know what you're talking about," she told him.

Lyle laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Give me back the laptop."

Emily shook her head. "No," she told him.

He stepped closer to her. "Yes, Emily."

She glared at him. "No way!"

Lyle shot her a cross look. "Emily, just do as you're told for once!" he snapped.

"GO AWAY!" Emily hollered.

Lyle laughed, then turned and walked away.

Emily clutched the laptop case to her chest. She jumped to her feet and raced after him. "Hey!" she shouted.

He turned around.

"I saw what was in your freezer," she told him in a loud whisper.

"Oh, did you, love?" he asked.

"Yes, I did," Emily told him. "And I'm telling my brother!"

Lyle laughed. "Tell whomever you please, my love!" he replied, and turned and walked away from her, humming Emmylou Harris's _Wrecking Ball_.

* * *

Emily turned back toward the bus stop, arms holding tight to the laptop case. Later, she sat on the bus, thinking about Jules, and the person whose fingers they were, and Dr. Brown, and her mom. She wondered why Lyle had asked if her mom was mad at him, wondered if he really had a daughter, and wondered what he had meant when they had been talking at the bus stop before she had left; wondered why he looked at her like that, wondered why he told her things, why he let her eat all of his biscuits, and wondered why he hadn't called the Sweepers. She wondered how he knew that she liked strawberry milkshake, but supposed that he had probably found that out the time he had thrown her out that window, supposed that maybe he had been following her for some time. She wondered why they had the same favourite colour, wondered why he had told her about the penguin, and all of that stuff about his wife, wondered if maybe he thought she was someone else. He was sick, his twenty-two little pill bottles told her that, sick and confused and mad, or at least, mentally ill in some degree. Perhaps she was sick too, she thought.

There was something terribly wrong with her, she knew. There had been ever since she had woken up and went wandering in that corridor, and maybe even before then, maybe ever since she had woken up in that hospital and Jarod had told her that he was her brother.

She didn't know why she had those dreams, or why she was so stupid, why every time Lyle walked away she wanted to go running after him, or why sometimes she got so mad at him as though she thought he was someone else, someone who cared, someone she could care about.

Maybe she was sick. Or maybe she was just ill-fated. Or maybe there was a reason she got so confused, maybe it was the same reason Lyle did too. Maybe, she thought, and wanted to laugh, they had met in another life. Maybe that was why he always talked to her as though he knew her, or maybe he just talked to everyone like that.

She couldn't make it out. What was wrong with her, and what was wrong with him? And he had said that June worked for the Tower, and that she was dangerous. He had known that someone had given her that gun, and that it had been a woman, and in his mind she worked for the Tower, but he had not known her name. It seemed very unlikely to her, but everything about the whole world since she had gotten well again had seemed very unlikely.

She thought of Snow, and wondered if he sometimes felt the same.


	11. Chapter 11

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Emily told him about the dreams, didn't – couldn't – tell him that the man was Lyle, said she didn't know who he was, said she'd never met him before.

Ethan grinned, sitting across the table from her in the little booth.

Emily moaned, made a face, told him again that she didn't know him, didn't know the man in her dreams.

Ethan took her hands in his in the middle of the tabletop. "Do you believe in love?" he asked her.

Emily laughed, made a face. Her hands in Ethan's made her feel safe, made her feel steady, but she couldn't help but laugh. Did she believe in love!

"There's this thing," Ethan told her, "Lyle once told me about."

Emily choked and laughed again; her laugh, her smile, amused and disbelieving.

Ethan smiled back at her and nodded. "He said he knew- Well, at first, I thought he meant, you know, true love… The One…" He smiled again. As if anyone could mistake him for someone who believed in the One! "But it's not like that, I mean, not exactly. It's complicated, I suppose. He said it's called Convergence, and it means… it means that we'll never be lonely, means, even if we're not loved, we'll never be lonely, that somewhere there's someone who's meant for us, someone we're meant for. It's not love, not if we don't want it to be, not if we don't make it, it's just that we need that person, need to be with them, need to be around them. It doesn't even have to be sexual, if we don't want it to be, it can just be companionship." Ethan laughed. "But we can't push it away once we've found it, once we've found our Convergence partner. If we do that, it'll get stronger, if we do that, we might end up doing things we don't remember afterward. That's just the rules."

"Who's 'we'?" Emily asked, smiling slightly, eyes big.

"People with the anomaly." Ethan shrugged. "You know, like- Well, I mean, I don't know," he shook his head, "if you… have the anomaly too, but Jarod and I," he rolled his eyes, "and Lyle… People like us."

Emily frowned. "So, does the person you have Convergence with have to have the anomaly too?"

"No," Ethan replied. "They just have to be… If you're a man, they'll be a woman; if you're a woman, they'll be a man."

Emily sighed heavily in exaggerated relief and rolled her eyes. She frowned. "So, do you think I have the anomaly?" she asked.

"That or he does," Ethan told her.

Emily made a face. "Did I mention that I hate Lyle – and don't trust a word he says!"

Ethan laughed. Hardly surprising, he hadn't believed it either when he'd been told about it for the first time. "He gave me this paperback book thing. It isn't something the Center believes, but he said the book was from one of their rivals, and that they believed in it in a big way."

Emily shook her head, eyes wide. "Did you ask him if he'd met _the One_?"

Ethan frowned, momentarily confused. "I don't know, I guess I should have," he said. "But I didn't."

Emily leant into him across the table. "I think it's nonsense," she confided in him in a quietened voice.

Ethan frowned, as though he might object.

"Well," Emily asked, "have you found her? Have you found your _One True Love_?"

Ethan made a face at her. "I haven't, but I think Charles and Margaret have Convergence," he told her.

Emily laughed hysterically, drawing away from him, eyes wide in her face, and hand plastered to her mouth.

"There are other things," Ethan told her. "Other rules. If someone with the anomaly has a child, the rules say that there is a strong possibility that their child will inherit the anomaly, which is most likely to be expressed in the same form as their own expression. But the rules only say that that expression will be inherited to an equal degree as that of the parent – or parents, if both parents have the anomaly – if the parents have Convergence."

"I think Lyle's been telling you stories," Emily admitted coolly, but all the time she was thinking, _Oh God, what has he given my baby, what has he given Snow?_ If it was true that they had Convergence, then she could hardly go on telling herself that Snow was fine, that he was a normal child, that he hadn't inherited anything more from his father than his eye colour and hair colour! And then she thought of that other boy – the baby Lyle had had with Brigitte – and wondered if he had inherited what Snow had surely inherited. It was almost too unfair for her to even consider the alternative, that he hadn't inherited the anomaly, that _he_ was a normal boy – but her baby wasn't! Her stomach hurt with the anger and unfairness of it, but all she could do was keep smiling. "What happens if something happens to your Convergence partner? If they die, for instance?" she asked.

"It's not good," Ethan told her.

* * *

"Do you think Jarod and Zoe have Convergence?" Emily asked.

"No," Ethan replied.

Jarod walked in from outside and took a seat beside Ethan, who passed him the menu card from beside the window.

"Jarod, do you think Convergence is real?" Emily asked.

Ethan shot her an annoyed look.

"Where did you hear that?" Jarod asked, without looking up from the menu card. "And no I don't. It's ridiculous and fabricated. It's not even realistic. It's just another control mechanism."

Ethan snorted. "You're only saying that because that's what Sydney says," he told Jarod.

Jarod took his eyes from the menu card and looked at him sharply.

Ethan held his gaze defiantly.

"And you only believe it's real because Raines shoved it down your throat that it was!" Jarod retorted.

"Raines wasn't the one who told me about it," Ethan told him. "Lyle was."

Jarod laughed. "Which means it must be true!" he half-shouted.

Ethan narrowed his brown eyes in a glare.

"Because a homicidal lunatic told you!"

Ethan crossed his arms and looked away from him and out the window.

Jarod shook his head.

Emily frowned.

"It's rubbish," Jarod told her. "It's not true. It's not even remotely plausible."

Ethan said nothing, but glared at the window.

Jarod returned the menu card to the middle of the table.

Seeing that the company they had said they were waiting for had arrived, a waitress walked over to their table to take their order.

"Aliens are real," Jarod told Emily, voice plain.

"Move!" Ethan said suddenly, glaring at Jarod. When Jarod didn't move, he shouted. "MOVE!"

Jarod shuffled out of the booth and stood up.

Ethan got up and stormed off past him toward the door.

The waitress stopped at their table and Jarod told her his order before taking his seat once more.

The waitress looked at Emily.

* * *

Parker sat down at the table with her lunch tray. Broots and Sydney, who she usually ate lunch with, had not arrived yet. Though she had come into the dining hall earlier than she usually did, she reflected. She took out the appointment card for her appointment with the Tower official and glanced down at the time when her appointment was to be – 4:10 P.M. – and frowned. She knew it didn't help, but she couldn't help but feel nervous. She returned the appointment card to her jacket and took the coffee off her lunch tray.

* * *

"You don't have Convergence with Lyle," Jarod said, breaking the long silence.

Emily looked up at him, wide-eyed.

"First of all, it's rubbish," Jarod told her, finally looking up. "And even if it wasn't, he would never have _dared_ throw you out a window if you'd had Convergence." He sipped his coffee absently.

"That's not why I asked," she told him. "That's not what I thought." She shook her head. "Ethan said he thought Charles and Margaret had Convergence."

Jarod frowned from across the table.

Emily frowned back at him. "But wouldn't that make me a Pretender if it was true?"

"I'm not familiar with the theory," Jarod said.

Emily made a face.

Jarod sighed, reading her expression. If he wasn't familiar with the dictates then how could he properly say that it wasn't true? And how could he criticise Ethan for believing in it when he didn't know what it was Ethan believed in in the first place?

"Then why say Lyle wouldn't have thrown me out of that window if we'd had Convergence?" Emily asked.

Jarod sat back in his seat. "If he loved you, then he would hardly throw you out a window," he explained.

"That's not what it's about," Emily said.

Jarod shrugged.

"Why 'dared'?"

Jarod frowned, annoyed. "Maybe I know some of the rules," he admitted irritably. "I should just have put my hands over my ears when Sydney and Raines started arguing about it, now? They were always arguing about it, you'd think they'd run out of things to argue about and just accept that they had different opinions and stop arguing. But they didn't. If Kyle was still alive, that'd be us, arguing about the same stupid thing, over and over again." He stopped talking.

Emily looked down at her plate. She'd never met Kyle, but she knew Jarod had.

* * *

Broots and Sydney arrived in the dining hall and walked over to the table she was sitting at once they had been to get what they wanted for lunch from one of the cafeteria workers at the counter, Broots telling Sydney loudly about what had happened in the latest edition of _TLTC_, a comic book serial dedicated to chronicling Center history, so Parker had heard – she'd never read the comic.

She ate her chicken schnitzel and listened to Broots giving a running commentary on the exploits of Destiny's Daughter a.k.a. the Lost Daughter of Destiny a.k.a. the Source a.k.a. the Gift of Men a.k.a. Catherine Parker.

"…the Guardian," Broots was saying to Sydney, "that's you-"

"Hang on," Parker interrupted, "that sucks."

Broots stared at her in confusion and, Parker thought, shock.

Parker shrugged and resumed eating her lunch.

Broots didn't talk for a long moment, then he turned back to Sydney and continued telling him about his comic book counterpart, pointing something out in the comic book laying on the table in front of him.

* * *

He didn't want to think about Kyle, so instead Jarod wondered why he'd even brought up Lyle, or why he'd even said that Emily didn't have Convergence with Lyle – as if that had been what Ethan and her had been talking about!

Not only did he hate Lyle, he was disturbed that he could even discuss the concept of Emily and Lyle having Convergence, even if just theoretically, and why he had even kept talking about it when it had made him uncomfortable, not the least that he could see that it was making Emily uncomfortable.

If it was really real, he conceded, he would feel sorry for the woman who would have Convergence with Lyle, and then he thought of Kyle – dead – and wondered, if Convergence was real, if it had hurt his Convergence partner when he had died, or if it had done nothing at all because they had never known each other.

Then he wondered why he was thinking about Convergence at all when he didn't believe in it, and told himself that he wouldn't wonder about his own Convergence partner, because if it really was real then he would have one.

He should just have stopped thinking about it once he had given Emily his answer to her question as to whether or not he thought it was real, he conceded. Then he wouldn't have upset Ethan so that he had left, then he wouldn't have made Emily uncomfortable so that she stared at her food but didn't feel like eating it, then he wouldn't have been thinking about Kyle, and then he wouldn't be feeling angry at himself for not wanting to think about Kyle.

* * *

Emily stepped outside and walked over to where Ethan was sitting on the pavement outside the roadhouse. "I got you this," she said, holding out the cup of coffee.

Ethan looked around at her and looked at the coffee. After a moment, he took the cup. "Thanks," he muttered.

Emily smoothed the back of her skirt with her hands, briefly wondering why she was wearing a dress, and sat down on the pavement beside him. "How are you?"

Ethan made a noncommittal sound in his throat and took a sip of his coffee.

* * *

Jarod watched Emily sitting outside with Ethan and told himself he wouldn't call Sydney, then he just kept thinking how stupid he had been to bring up Emily and Lyle having Convergence, because in the back of his mind he could still remember Raines telling Sydney about residual Convergence – Raines had been talking about Parker and he, so he'd been paying special attention – but residual Convergence hadn't meant that Parker and he had had Convergence, it had just meant, according to Raines, that they had each – he and Parker – had spent considerable time in the company of one of two people who shared Convergence.

For a moment, Jarod wondered if it had been Sydney on his end, and wondered, if it was, who it had been on Parker's end. A maid or sitter, perhaps? Or a schoolteacher? If it had been Catherine, he was sure it would have been evident to him when Sydney and Catherine were together. Though, he conceded, he had not often been in the company of both of them at the same time.

Still, he was certain he would have known. He knew, after all, what it felt like when two people had Convergence. He wondered, then, how he could not believe in Convergence, but then, he did not know what it felt like to have Convergence, to feel it on the inside, for he'd never met his Convergence partner.

He wondered if he would know, if he'd met both of the people who shared Convergence separately, if he would know if they had Convergence. He'd never met Emily and Lyle together, after all.

For a moment, he couldn't think, and then he realised it was because he was afraid, afraid that Emily and Lyle really did have Convergence.

He pushed the thought aside – there was no secret, underlying reason why he'd brought up Emily and Lyle not having Convergence – and took out his cell phone. He punched in Sydney's number.

* * *

"This is Sydney," Parker heard Sydney's customary response when answering a phone call, and then Sydney had gotten up and walked away. She glanced at Broots eating his chicken schnitzel. It was Chicken Thursday, so it wasn't surprising that he, also, had chosen chicken schnitzel for lunch.

"Do I have a name?" she asked.

Broots looked up at her quickly.

She nodded to the comic book. "Do I have a name in that thing?"

Broots frowned, thinking this through. "Well, of course, there's Miss Parker," he replied. "Then there's the Legacy."

"The Legacy," Parker said, testing how the name sounded when she said it.

Broots nodded, watching her, thinking that she might ask him something else about the comic, something he could answer.

Parker shrugged. "I suppose you could take that two ways, depending on whose legacy you're referring after, Daddy's or Momma's."

Broots nodded hastily in agreement.

Parker glanced at him. "And who's my daddy?"

For a moment, all Broots did was stare at her, then his mouth moved and he said: "It doesn't say. I mean, it just says it's Mr. Parker, because Catherine and he a-are married."

Parker shrugged and chewed on a chip she had just picked up off her plate. It wasn't as though she had expected it to.

* * *

"I believe that other people believe," Sydney's accented voice told him from his cell phone.

Jarod wondered if it made a difference if Sydney said he believed that other people believed, even though he, himself, didn't believe; if it was the same as saying he really believed, the same as giving in when there were too many people on the other side and conceding loss and joining the winning camp. After all, Sydney had never conceded to this fact in the past.

But no, Sydney said, when he asked, it was merely staying realistic, keeping it real. And then Sydney asked: Did he believe?

"No," Jarod said, and then he knew that Sydney would ask why he didn't believe, and he wanted to tell Sydney that he was sorry – sorry for what he was about to do – but then Sydney would ask why, so he pressed the button to end the call, and then he couldn't hear Sydney's voice anymore.

He told himself that the next time it would be his father he would call, but he knew that he couldn't talk to Charles about things like Kyle or Lyle, and especially not things he saw as the Center maintaining control over him, like ridiculous theories about love, or the One.

* * *

Parker stepped out of the Tower official's office, letting herself breathe easier. That was that. What was done was done, she couldn't change it now. Now all she had to do was wait and see.

"How do you think it went?"

Parker turned around. Lyle stood leant against the wall, watching her. She made a face.

Lyle stood away from the wall. "Can we talk?"

Parker considered walking off on him, then she changed her mind, thinking that if she did that, he might just follow her and take it up with her. "Talk," she said.

"Not here," he told her. "Can I buy you a coffee…" he shook his head, "or something… after work?"

Parker frowned. She didn't like this.

Lyle smiled. "You know what-"

"A coffee. After work," Parker cut him off, then turned and walked away before she changed her mind. She had started to feel sick.


	12. Chapter 12

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Parker walked through the undercover parking, deliberately walking slower in case Lyle was waiting by her car. He hadn't told her where to meet him, after all. And he hadn't called her when she'd still been in her office. Though she hadn't given it to him, she didn't know whether he had her cell phone number or not, and she wondered if he would call her on that.

Lyle was not waiting by her car, instead she found a note – a folded piece of paper – clamped to the windshield by the windshield wipers. She walked a bit faster and pulled on the note until it came free of its entrapment. She unfolded the note and glanced down at the handwriting, print and clumsy as though that of a child, and written in green ink: _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It can't be you._

Parker frowned and turned on the spot, scanning the parking lot for other people. Several nurses were walking toward their cars, having just come from inside – she caught the light sound of laughter – but there was no one close, no one who could have written the note, and certainly no children.

She folded the note once more and let herself into her car with her key. She started the ignition, checked that the rear vision mirror was clear and that there were no cars behind her, waiting to spring on her and collide with the rear of her car, and backed out of the parking space.

* * *

"Jarod, could you take a look at this for me?" Emily's voice asked and Jarod looked up from a file he had been reading to see her holding out a laptop to him.

He frowned, taking the laptop from her, and noticed that it was not black, as he had first thought, but dark green. He stared at the symbol set into the centre of the lid: a baby cradled, Thumbelina-like, in an iris flower, and clutched in the baby's chubby hand, what might easily be mistaken for a crucifix, but what Jarod knew to be the Center's insignia.

He looked up at Emily. The symbol was that of an experimental eugenics facility, an auxiliary of the Center operated across the border in Canada, though it was outdated, as the current symbol had been altered slightly, though it still featured the iris flower and the baby, though instead of the flower acting as a cradle for the baby, it now acted as a throne-like chair.

"It's password secured," Emily told him.

"Please tell me the truth, Emily," Jarod said, placing the laptop down at the desk in front of him, on top of the papers in the file he had been reading, and got to his feet. "Where did you get the laptop and who does it belong to?"

Emily made a face. For a moment, Jarod was sure she was going to lie to him, then she took an unsteady breath and he could see in her eyes that she would tell him the truth. "It's Lyle's," she told him.

Jarod felt himself freeze, felt all of his muscles freeze, clamp tight, but forced himself not to give in to the anger fast rising in his chest, in his veins. He told himself he would reserve comment for when he had listened to all of Emily's explanation.

"I went to Blue Cove…" Emily paused – Jarod's chest gave a painful pang at hearing the name of that town, and that Emily had been there, let alone that she had gone alone – before continuing in a plain voice, "to see him." Her voice struck in her throat and she paused again to collect herself. "I thought… I don't know… maybe I thought that if we could talk about it… then I wouldn't be so scared." She looked around, eyes wide, and sat down in the chair Jarod had vacated. "I'm always so scared," she told him, and smiled strangely. "I want to move on…? But I'm scared." She laughed, confused and lost. "I don't even know what I'm scared of, not…" She squeezed her eyes shut momentarily. "If I'm scared of Lyle, or if I'm scared because of what happened, because of what Lyle did, or if I'm scared of something else?"

"Did you talk to him?" Jarod asked in a soft voice, Emily was staring straight ahead of her as though trying to find an answer to a question she had forgotten.

"He was unhelpful," Emily replied, matter-of-factly and slightly irritated, as though repeating the answer to a question she'd been asked too many times, in too many different ways. "He was behaving like a child." She frowned to herself, narrowing her eyes a bit. "I took his laptop and he came to ask for it back, but I told him that I wouldn't give it back and he said that was fine, and I said I would tell you about the fingers in his freezer and he said that was fine too." She closed her eyes and started to hum Ilene Woods' _A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes_ from the original 1950 version of Disney's _Cinderella_.

"I'll take a look at it," Jarod said, deciding to put his questions on hold until Emily was feeling more stable, and wondered about the fingers Emily had said Lyle had had in his freezer, and how Emily had got out of Blue Cove without the Center following her. Then he wondered if they really were safe, if maybe the Center had followed Emily, and knew exactly where they were, but were biding their time, and for some reason, he wanted to cry, feeling strangely useless.

Emily sniffed and stood up to let him sit down, tried to speak and failed, and moved away, across the room, to find somewhere else to sit.

Jarod opened the laptop lid – there had been no cables to connect to a power outlet – and frowned at the screen.

Across the room, Emily started to cry in between humming and Jarod tried not to think about it, which only made him feel worse and even more as though he wanted to cry too.

As Emily had said, the laptop was password-protected. Some time later, he didn't know how long it had been, he heard the sound of a door opening, and he looked up and saw that it was Ethan, arms around Emily. He looked away again, wishing Ethan would hold him too, but knowing that that wouldn't happen.

Ethan always said that he didn't – couldn't – do comfort, couldn't do sensitivity, but Jarod knew, though Ethan might have believed this, that it wasn't at all true. Ethan was the best of them. He said what he thought, what he felt, and he was willing to openly change his opinion if his opinion on something had changed, rather than sticking it out with something he no longer believed in effort to preserve his pride.

* * *

"Get out of my house!" Lyle hollered, not even caring if the neighbours heard and complained.

The woman, who shared a remarkable resemblance to Parker, made a face. It wasn't his house – it wasn't even a house – and he didn't own it, he was renting it!

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

"You're acting like a child!" the woman told him as though it were a mere observation, amused.

Lyle sat down on the sofa and started to cry.

"You're pushing it a bit, aren't you?" the woman commented, but Lyle didn't hear her, he was trying to breathe and cry at the same time.

The woman sighed heavily and shook her head, her hair, which was cut in an old fashioned style reminiscent of the fifties, slapping her face. "Quite aside from what you think you know, or what you say you feel, I neither 'did' anything to Lucy, nor Brigitte or-" She put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes to think, opening her eyes a moment later. "Jamal? John? Junior?"

"Jimmy!"

"As I said," the woman continued, "I did nothing to any of these people you say I have done things to!"

"Get out…" Lyle told her from the sofa, hugging a cushion.

"I thought we could talk," the woman told him, unaffected.

"No…"

The woman shook her head. "Why don't we talk about what you think I did to this Leticia thing… girl?" she suggested.

Lyle giggled into the cushion.

The woman appeared momentarily disquieted.

"LUCY!" he yelled, laughing irrationally. "YANG LING!"

The woman made a face, leaning backward. "Yang?" She made a sound in her throat. "Yuck!"

"Ling!"

"I don't understand you," the woman informed him, feigning indifference. "Why you mingle with these _types_?" She shook her head carefully, mindful of her composure and her hair. With a small shrug of her right shoulder, she turned her back to him, folding her arms over her chest as she did.

Lyle laughed hysterically from the sofa and dropped the cushion. It landed on to the floor.

After a few moments, the woman turned back to him, unfurling her arms, and spied the cushion, eyes instantly narrowing in disapproval. No child of hers would have ever been so untidy! And, certainly, no child of hers would have thrown such displays, laughing as though they were, in fact, a lunatic, and not sane at all! "Pick that cushion up," she bid him, "before you fall over it." She would never admit it, but she had grown quite fond of the boy, in her own way.

Lyle stopped laughing, possibly to get some air, the woman thought, he'd been having quite the fit, laughing like that. Sometimes she thought that it was true, that he truly was mad, though she knew, in some capacity, that he certainly was, that he was as mentally ill as his mother had been, and possibly he was more like her than any of his siblings, than any of Catherine's other children, and it made her heart swell – to think of Catherine – but she knew that her concern could only ever be for Catherine, could never be for him, for Lyle. Though, too, she knew that part of the reason she had not left yet, had not left when he had asked her to do so, had to do with just that – concern – because it had been harder than usual to 'communicate' with him, to reach across that seemingly impenetrable void, to reach out for warm eyes and warm hands and warm hearts where blood still pumped, and to feel something, to feel something of the shadow of life, because it had been a concerted effort, an exertion.

She remembered the days when it had been the easiest thing in the world, so to speak. Oh, to think on those days! It was not like that anymore. And she was certain that the complication did not, in fact, arise from her side, but from his. She was stronger than ever! He, on the other hand, seemed to be winding down, and – reserve, be damned! – she was concerned. She could not understand that.

She had spent more years than she could care to recall in just that such endeavour, and here she was, standing here, slumped now, eyeing that one lazy, discarded cushion nastily, pettily, as though it were somehow all the cushion's fault, and worrying! She should have been rejoicing! So why wasn't she? What was wrong with her?

Resolute in her carelessness, she turned and walked toward the door, where she promptly disappeared before she could walk headlong into the door.

Lyle picked the cushion up and hugged it and started to cry again. A moment later, he sniffed and returned the cushion to the sofa and held his head.

A small woman, her image watery and transparent, faded into life in front of him, but by the time she had become solid and Tazu, Lyle had dropped his hands from his head and was looking fine again, as though he hadn't just been crying at all.

"It is so hard to reach you these days," Tazu told him, taking up on the cushion on the sofa beside him, the smaller cushion clutched by its border in her hands, and turned to glance at him frankly. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm fine," Lyle told her, perplexed. He glanced at her small hands holding the cushion tightly. "Maybe it's something that's happening everywhere in the ether… or whatever…?" He tried a Russian accent. "The Gloom?" Smiled at his own joke.

Tazu did not smile and stared down at her hands too.


	13. Chapter 13

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Lyle thought about his little brother, who wasn't really his little brother at all, the same way Mr. Parker hadn't really been anybody's father. The Tower had made it clear that he wasn't to visit the child. He thought about Lucy: funny, smart, beautiful Lucy. He thought about the funeral, about Bobbi, about Brigitte, about Kyle, about Jimmy.

Funny, smart, beautiful dead Lucy.

He tried to imagine her smiling, but all she did was scream. Scream and scream and scream until he wanted to scream too. There was Lucy, screaming, there was Lucy, dying. And there was Lucy, dead.

He thought about his sister, Parker, about Catherine, his real mother, about Raines, about Eddie and Dexter, about Sam. Lucy would have said something funny. Lucy would have said something to make him laugh.

Like Kyle, or Thomas. And Brigitte would be the one telling him – them all – to grow up. And Jimmy would be the one pretending he didn't find it funny at all, arms crossed over his chest.

For a long while, since deciding earlier in the day that it couldn't be Parker, he had thought that it would be Ethan, that it would be Ethan whom he would pass the secrets on to, that Ethan would be their new keeper, their new guardian, but he was seeing, more and more, as he thought about it, that it couldn't be Ethan either, that it may have to be someone else, that it may have to be Jarod. Jarod was not perceptive, at least, not in the sense of any expression of the gene anomaly pertaining to this, not an Empath, and he did not have the Inner Sense; his Perception was relatively low-strength, almost dormant.

He wanted to cry – wanted to slap himself – thinking about it. He wished he could just stop crying. He had damaged himself deeply. He knew this was the reason he was always crying, always emotionally unstable. He wanted to be strong, wanted to do something for Lucy, wanted to be able to breathe.

Inside, he could feel it, could feel what Tazu saw when she looked at him. He told himself that he hadn't done so badly, alongside all of those others, he hadn't done so badly, but he knew that it wasn't just that, that what was damaged was deeper than that.

He would have to tell Jarod, he knew. He'd have to… make him promise… Promise to never let them hurt his little brother – his son – Reagan, that way. Knew he should have done something sooner, that he'd failed Reagan the way he'd failed all of the others, the way he'd failed all of his children, knew that he should have taken him out, gotten him out, sent him away. But he'd never… he'd always let them down… and that would be the one thing they'd all remember about him, that he'd let them down, that he'd let all of them down. He'd always let them down.

He'd wanted… wanted to change, for Bobby, wanted to be better, at least to the little ones, he knew that that would be what Bobby would have wanted, that Bobby would have been better, would have given up everything to be better for them, would have died, would have put aside love, put aside hate, put aside dreams, put aside fear… to make it all better, if just for one moment, for the little ones. But he wasn't Bobby, and it had been Bobby who'd… who'd made it all bad, who'd made Jimmy go away, had tried to save himself and had damned himself – them both – instead. And when it had all failed, he'd been there to pick up the pieces, to try and put something back together again, not Bobby, but something, he'd been there to make it all better, to look after Bobby. And look what a good job he'd done of that! He'd failed Bobby, just as he'd failed himself, just as he'd failed the children, just as he'd failed everyone.

He tried to be positive, knew it wouldn't be long now, didn't want to go like that, didn't want to be morose, didn't want to hate, when he went. So he told himself that it would be alright, that once he'd told Jarod the secrets, it would all be alright, that he'd be able to go then, that he wouldn't be afraid, that he'd go, that he wouldn't be sad, that he wouldn't cry, that he'd see it as an adventure, that he wouldn't try to hold on, try to change things. It was too late for all of that now. It wasn't the right time anymore.

Sometimes he thought that the right time had come and gone, but he told himself that Jarod would make it all alright, that Jarod would be able to do what he hadn't, that Jarod would see the right time and that he'd make the right decision, that he'd act or not act, but that he'd do the right thing. Of course, Jarod would believe what he'd tell him. But why should Jarod believe him? Why should Jarod even listen to him?

So he cried again, wished it could have all been different, wished he could have never been born, wanted to yell at himself for wishing it, thought that maybe Catherine wouldn't have gone mad – mentally ill – had he never been born, maybe Parker wouldn't have been hurt so much, maybe Catherine wouldn't have died, maybe Jimmy wouldn't have been killed, maybe Parker and Sam would have had that baby and gotten married, maybe Kyle – Brigitte, Thomas, Lucy, Tazu, Chiyo, William – would have lived, maybe Emily would have stayed with Ray, maybe everything would have been better.

"What happened to coffee?" Parker asked him, walking toward him in the corridor. He wanted to turn and run, maybe hide in the bathroom. But it was just a dream, because Parker never asked.

* * *

He woke to the sound of a telephone ringing and found that he had fallen asleep on the floor in front of the sofa. He stood up and walked to the telephone and picked up the receiver. His eyes hurt. "Lyle," he answered.

It was Fulton, that familiar disdain evident. She'd tried talking to Sam, but Sam hadn't even dignified her with a response. Parker hadn't known. He was her last resort, she told him. She'd tried his office extension, but he hadn't answered, so she'd tried his apartment. She didn't ask how he was, why he'd been at home to pick up the phone when she'd rang.

Lyle squeezed his eyes closed and opened them again. His head hurt as well as his eyes. "What time is it?" he asked.

"Eleven A.M.-ish," Fulton replied after a moment.

He glanced at the window. "What is it?" he asked her, to the point. Eleven already? Damn!

Fulton did not speak.

Lyle rolled his eyes, though she couldn't see him, ready to hang up.

"You wouldn't happen to know the names of Edna's mother or father, by chance, would you?" Fulton asked slowly. "My husband's first wife," she added.

"No," Lyle replied bluntly, stifling a snort. It wasn't as though he hadn't known who she had meant! "Her grandfather raised her. Her mother's father. His name was Egil."

"Is that Icelandic?" Fulton asked hesitantly.

"Norwegian," he replied. He shook his head, causing it to hurt more. "Look, have a good day…" He hung up and ran a hand through his hair. His hand shook. He made a face.

He thought about going back to bed – he felt sick – but changed his mind and called a cab instead. Should have been at work hours ago!

* * *

For the first time in forty-five years, the dining hall allocations had been changed. Sydney stood and stared.

Broots came up behind him, hungry, wondering why Sydney was just standing there.

"I… I can't eat that," Sydney explained, turning to him. He shook his head.

Broots stared at him for a moment.

Sydney shook his head again. "No," he decided, and walked on past Broots.

Broots gaped.

Parker appeared in the dining hall, took an arm and wrenched Sydney around. "Then you can just sit and watch Broots and I eating," she said, pulling Sydney after her as she made her way toward the small queue of people waiting to be served lunch.

Broots hurried after her.

* * *

Parker distractedly listened to the music playing over the radio station – Bay FM – as she ate her rice and curry thing, Sydney sitting across from her, watching her. She looked up at him and smiled. The food was nice, he should have gotten himself something.

Sydney smiled back at her.

Parker smiled a bit more and went back to eating her lunch, trying not to laugh and choke on her food. She reached out a hand, without looking at him, and pushed a very cool coffee towards Sydney. If he wasn't going to eat anything, he could at least drink something.

* * *

"What the Hell?" Brown's agitated Welsh-accented voice demanded.

A woman serving the food said something to him, which Parker did not hear.

Brown turned about and marched angrily away, white cross-like Tower pin glinting malevolently from his starch white shirt, cut in an old style, off-white linen scarf at his neck.

The woman looked about her, left and then right. What was his problem, anyway? The way he dressed! Oh, he was a regular Casanova, alright!

Parker glanced at Broots, stifling a grin.

* * *

Cherry and Plum, in their nurses' uniforms, and arm-in-arm with Midori, strolled into the dining hall, smiling and singing along to the song that was playing over the radio, something Shakira. The trio stopped suddenly in front of the Tower doctor, as though just noticing him. Cherry and Midori burst into giggles simultaneously, but Plum, looking Brown in the face – whose expression Parker could not see from where she was sitting – finished the song. Cherry and Midori only laughed harder, and it wasn't until Brown stepped around them, that the three finally moved to make their way toward the counter, and Parker watched, some minutes later, as the three took seats at a table to eat their lunches.

A while later, Reston approached the three, who burst into laughter at the sight of him.

"No, look, I-" he began, which only caused the women to laugh all the more.

Eventually Reston gave up and left.

Parker was starting to think that nothing could stop them laughing, when Lyle walked into the dining hall and stopped to look at them. Midori noticed him first and immediately fell silent, tears welling up in her eyes, and Cherry and Plum, seeing the way Midori was looking, stopped laughing too. Cherry reached a hand for Midori's hand and squeezed it, but Plum sat rigidly, jaw set, until Lyle moved away, first getting himself a coffee, and then walking toward the vending machines, notice board and various posters. He sat at one of the tables there until a group of admins, lunch trays in hand, and obviously remembering the Tower inquiry, exclaimed loudly that they weren't hungry anymore, and then stood glaring at him dirtily until Lyle stood up and, to Parker's surprise, walked out of the dining hall.

Later, Cox took a seat at the table with Cherry and Plum and Midori to eat his own lunch, and Parker heard the admins caw loudly to Reston, who had been considering a table near to their own, "Oh my God!"

Reston took the table anyway.

* * *

Lyle sat at a table in Bay Mall in the section of the food court belonging to a small fast food restaurant that served Mexican cuisine, thinking that perhaps he should just have lied when Fulton had asked what Edna's parents' names had been. She only wanted to know so that she could carry out the next phase of her personal vendetta against her dead husband, he was sure.

He laughed, face reddening from trying to breathe at the same time. Any minute he would start turning blue, or someone would decide that he was completely crazy and find a security officer to sick on him, or both. He stopped laughing, his eyes feeling too watery, and decided to finish his beef taco and chips.

A tear ran down his cheek. He wiped it away.

* * *

He'd just pressed the button for the elevator and was waiting for the elevator to arrive when he realised that something was badly wrong, realised that he couldn't feel Reagan, tried to reach out, tried to tell himself that he was wrong, still couldn't feel him. He ran to the doors that led to the stairs, had to stop on the stairs, hold on to the wall, dizzy, feeling sick, pushed all that away, felt sicker still, wanted to cry – wished the elevator had hurried up – forced himself to keep moving, told himself that Reagan was fine, that the reason he couldn't feel him was because he was sick.

If Angelo hadn't noticed Reagan was gone – and he knew that he was, could feel it now – then an Empath had had to have been involved; a Class Three, at least, a class higher than Angelo, who was Two. A Tower Empath?

Lyle forced these thoughts away - he wanted Reagan to be okay, he wanted to be wrong – and emerged from the stairs into the corridor on the floor Merchant's office was situated on, had to stop to use his work card to open the door into the corridor. He ran to Merchant's office and found it locked, wanted to slide down the door and cry.

Holding back tears, he ran down the corridor. He supposed that Merchant would be in one of the Sim labs, but instead of head toward the labs, he headed for the bathroom, and, once he was sure that the bathroom was clear, took out his cell phone and punched in a number, praying that it was still valid.

One ring, two rings. "Jarod," Jarod's voice answered, all business.

"Emily's son," Lyle said, wishing he'd asked the child's name, "is he…" He stopped talking, wasn't sure if Jarod knew who was talking to him. "It's Lyle," he said, ignoring the audible scowl from Jarod.

"How did you get this number?" Jarod yelled, angry.

"It doesn't-!" Lyle stopped talking, started again. "Reagan's gone," he told Jarod. "Where is Emily's son?"

Jarod laughed horribly.

"Someone took Reagan," Lyle told him, losing patience. "I don't know who, why. But they took him without anyone realising. Just humour me, Jarod! Make sure he is where he's supposed to be." He ended the call and slid down the wall he had been standing beside. He knew that he had to tell someone that Reagan was gone, and he knew that Emily's son was gone too, that he wouldn't be where he should when Jarod went looking for him. He would have been the first one taken, he knew. Reagan wasn't going anywhere, they had known that, but Emily's son, they hadn't been so sure about, which meant that they probably knew that Emily was Jarod's sister, that they'd had access to Tower files through the Tower archives, and that they knew that Jarod had found his family, or at least part of his family, and that Emily had been staying with him.

He stood up, legs shaky, and walked out of the bathroom.


	14. Chapter 14

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Two weeks later_

Dumar, who worked for the Missing Persons Unit, had been the first to find the two children.

Jarod listened to her throwing up and wished that he was with her, throwing up too, wished that he could feel something. He was sure that he felt something – he had to feel something – but supposed that whatever it was, he was pushing it down, way down, out of some strange effort to protect himself.

When she'd first found the two boys they had been lying on the floor in one of the suburban house's smaller rooms, none of the rooms were used for what they were supposed to be used for, perhaps with the exception of the toilet, bathroom, and kitchen. She'd called out to the children, thinking that they hadn't registered her presence, or that they were perhaps asleep, but neither of the children had responded back to her, out of recognition or of fear. So, after having radioed in the find and instructing her partner of her intentions, she'd cautiously approached the two children and had found the younger child, the five-year-old, holding the older child, the eight-year-old.

By that time, the other members of the unit, including Jarod, had arrived in the hallway leading to the room.

At first, Dumar hadn't realised that anything was wrong, but then she'd noticed that the older boy wasn't breathing – he had red hair – that his chest wasn't moving at all, and when she'd tried to rouse the younger boy – he had dark brown hair – and take him from the older boy, he'd struggled and squealed and shrieked and held on tighter.

The doctor who'd examined the younger boy, who was named Snow, had concluded that he was in good health and that he had been unharmed.

Dumar, however, had concluded, by the fact that he was dead, that the older boy had been harmed.

The autopsy report that was submitted after an autopsy had been carried out on his body to determine cause of death – he'd been covered in bruises and lacerations, his right arm had been broken in three places, and his skull had been beaten in – had stated that he'd died due to the injury inflicted by a gunshot wound to the front of the head, the gun placed up against his forehead and fired.

When he'd first heard that the children had been found, Jarod had been anxious and frightened, and then when he'd seen them with his own eyes, relieved. When he'd seen Snow struggling and screaming, he'd been relieved. He'd been there to tell him that it was all going to be alright. And then, as he'd gotten closer, heart straining gladly in his chest – he was here now, he'd come, it was okay – he'd heard Dumar's whisper.

"Oh my God!"

Jarod didn't know why Reagan had been cut and bruised, didn't know what he'd done or said, if he'd done or said anything, to provoke the cuts and the bruises, if it had been torture, or some sort of interrogation technique. He didn't know why Reagan had been bashed in the head and shot.

He watched Emily with Snow in the hospital and knew that he would have to wait, that he would have to wait until they'd moved on to tell Parker, that to be safe he'd have to wait to tell her that her little brother, who might really have been her nephew, was dead, and remembered Dumar throwing up.

Margaret was standing in the corridor outside the room, crying, and her friend, Harmony, was holding her arm, looking sad and lost.

Ethan stood leant against the wall in the corridor, eyes dry.

Jarod wished that Charles was there, but Charles and his clone and Zoe were somewhere else. He'd tried calling them with no success.

As he listened to Margaret crying, Jarod realised that Emily and he were the only two who knew that Reagan had been Snow's brother – he'd kept his promise – and that he didn't know why Margaret was crying.

* * *

The news that Reagan was dead came the same day as the news that Sydney had been chosen as the next Chairman. Sydney was crying, and Broots was confused. Parker had left them in Sydney's office to answer the call on her phone, which had been Jarod, telling her that Reagan was dead.

Parker didn't cry, she didn't know what to do. She thanked Jarod for calling her and bringing her up to speed, for informing her that Reagan was dead and where to find his body, and hung up.

When she returned to Sydney's office, Sydney had stopped crying, though Broots was still looking confused. She closed the door to Sydney's office and turned back around to face the pair before telling them that Reagan was dead.

Broots put a hand over his mouth. As far as he'd known, they'd still been looking for the child. Now he was dead. He hunched forward, hand still over his mouth.

Sydney stood up and walked over to her slowly, then he put his arms around her and held her. Parker watched Broots trying not to cry. She wanted to congratulate Sydney on his future promotion to Chairman, but she knew that it was not the time.

She left Sydney's office with Sydney – she could hear Broots make a spluttery noise from inside the office as she walked away – and the pair walked to the elevators and rode up to the floor where the Chairman's office was located to inform the Chairman that Reagan was dead and that they had a lead on Jarod, who'd been the one to convey the news of Reagan's death to her.

* * *

Snow was unable or unwilling to tell them anything about what had happened to him, either why he had been kidnapped, or by whom, or what had happened during the time he had been kidnapped and the time he had been found in the house.

* * *

Broots put his spoon down on the kitchen table, his ice-cream unfinished, and glanced at Debbie sitting across the table, who was still eating her own ice-cream, home for Friday dinner.

He told her that he and Brigitte had had an affair, and that he thought that he'd loved her, and he told her that he'd always thought that Jarod would one day rescue Reagan, that he'd one day take him out of the Center and give him a real life.

Debbie stared at him, shocked and confused. She knew that Reagan was Parker's little brother, that he was eight years old, and she knew that Brigitte had been his mother, and that she'd shot Parker's fiancé, Thomas, but that she'd died due to complications in childbirth.

Reagan was dead, Broots told his daughter. Today Jarod had rung to tell Parker that Reagan was dead, that he would never have a real life.

Debbie put her spoon and her ice-cream down at the table and cried.

* * *

When they arrived to claim Reagan's body, Jarod was long gone. Parker hadn't really expected him not to be. When she asked to see the body and she was shown it, she collapsed to the floor.

Sam moved quickly toward her, and Lyle left the room to go outside, perhaps for some air. Sydney talked with the medical examiner about the state of the body and the autopsy report and asked if a police investigation into the death had been called and was told that a case had been called but it had been closed due to lack of evidence.

Broots stood beside the body, looking at it, and blinked back tears. He had been told not to touch it, but he just wanted to hold Reagan's hand. He just wanted to tell him that it was okay now, that it was all okay now. His parents had been religious people and he'd been raised religious, but he hadn't really believed in it, so when he'd gotten old enough, he'd stopped saying prayers and going to church, but he still believed in something, he still believed that there was something out there that bound all life in the universe together and that each and every living thing was a part of that something and connected, and he believed in goodness and kindness and love.

He turned away from Reagan's body and walked out of the room and outside, trying not to think about the discussion Sydney had been having with the ME, and walked over to Lyle, who was sitting on the ground in the parking lot, looking pale. He sat down next to Lyle and looked across at him.

"I'm sorry," Lyle told him, and Broots looked away and out across the parking lot at all the cars.


	15. Chapter 15

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

The funeral was sombre and stifled. Too quiet. Lyle wanted to yell, it was so, so quiet. The same man who had attended Raines' funeral as lead speaker attended Reagan's, said what an utter waste it was, a waste of life, just eight years old.

Lyle listened to Plum sobbing, arm-in-arm with Cherry, her own face streaked with tears.

Midori stood with Bobbi and three Russian bodyguards, Bobbi dressed in her school uniform with black pantyhose and school shoes, a black winter coat with fake fur poking out of the hood carefully arranged over her check school dress.

Sydney had invested in a new suit for the occasion. He'd been appointed Chairman a day ago. Michelle and Nicholas stood by his side, Nicholas wearing a pin belonging to one of those organisations who advocated against gun violence.

Parker stood on Nicholas' right, with Broots and Debbie, Debbie's friend Dolphy, four years older than her, in all her Goth glory, sunflower clutched in one hand, and holding Debbie's hand tightly.

Lyle couldn't look her in the eye. They both knew that it was his fault.

Like Plum, Merchant stood crying, standing a little too far from Angelo, who was yet to shed a tear.

Cox and Sam stood by Midori and Bobbi, Sims close by, and Brown standing with Sydney, the new Chairman.

When the congregation was asked if they'd like the opportunity to say some words, Merchant had shook her head, nodded, and moved toward the speaker to remind the group of the gathering, which, though she couldn't say the word, was being classified as a wake, that was being held at the Center, and the time and the room of this event.

Brown stepped forward to make a statement, as he'd been instructed by the Tower, about the futility of such deaths, about the great loss the entire corporation felt, and if he was slightly sickened at this sentiment that would have Reagan as just another trophy that had never hung on their wall, that he been taken too early before he could show the world – show them – how he could shine – how many trophies he could hang on their walls – he did not allow it to show.

A Triumvirate representative emerged from the parking lot where a shiny black car with black-tinted windows idled, waiting for his return, and walked among the group toward the two men, Brown and the speaker from the funeral company, where he turned and assured the amassed gathering that the Triumvirate intended to find those at fault, and passed on condolences from T-Corp, the Center's largest rival.

Before either Sydney or Brown could respond to this, the Triumvirate representative had started back toward the parking lot and the waiting car. Brown moved swiftly to Sydney's side and the two began talking in a low voice.

People moved forward to place flowers and small items upon the coffin before it would disappear into the ground forever. Debbie placed a little teddy bear upon the coffin and stood with Dolphy as the sunflower she had held clutched in her hand joined the teddy bear.

Sims brought a large white lily which he placed upon the coffin beside the many other white flowers.

Bobbi said a prayer for Reagan in Latin, prayed for the safety of his soul, in her prim, painfully pronounced Latin.

Broots offered a red rose, the only other colour beside Debbie's little blue teddy bear and Dolphy's bright yellow sunflower.

Parker, Nicholas walking three steps behind her, gave a white rose, and when she turned away, she saw that Nicholas also held white flowers, a bunch of white carnations with a small card which she could see was blank.

* * *

Jarod could not be comforted by the Triumvirate's declaration to find the truth, knew that whilst they may have T-Corp's blessing, that they would not have the Center's, that the Center would see their investigation as a personal attack, and T-Corp's condolences as rubbing salt in their wounds, as kicking them when they were down, as dirty, underhanded and despicable and low.

He glanced at Margaret and Snow, seated at the sofa in front of a broadcasting television –_Over the Hedge_ was playing – Margaret, asleep, arms holding Snow loosely, the five-year-old's blue eyes, so like Reagan's eyes, fixed blankly to the television screen.

He walked out of the room, scrolled through the functions on his cell phone until he was able to find the number Lyle had rang him on, hit the button to ring back.

"Lyle Parker," Lyle answered, and for a moment, Jarod did not speak but listened to the other voices he could hear in the background. "Who is this?" Lyle's voice asked.

"If I find out that you had something to do with this," Jarod told him, not bothering to answer Lyle's question, "you're dead." With that, he ended the call.

* * *

Merchant stepped out of the bathroom in the corridor, her recently ruined make up pristine once again, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, tears swelling the edges of her eyes.

Lyle dropped the cell phone he had been holding and collapsed to the floor.

Merchant flinched at the sound.

Angelo watched with wide eyes as Lyle convulsed on the floor, and did not turn when Merchant burst into tears.

They were not surprised tears, or shocked tears, she knew, after all, that Lyle was epileptic, so it had not come as a revelation, but it never failed to upset her. Her job at the Center consisted of her role as a psychiatrist and a specialist in Empathy, and out of that, as a mentor and/or handler to several Empaths, one of whom had been Reagan, and another who was Angelo.

She knew, too, that Lyle possessed a degree of Empathy, but to what degree she could not definitively say. Raines had once said, when he'd still been alive, that Lyle was not epileptic, at least not in the tradition sense, and that his expression was always going to have a large bearing on his epilepsy, from the time it had developed, and perhaps, he was speculating, it had been his expression which had lead to the development of his epilepsy in the fore.

Certainly, the relationship between Angelo and Lyle would suggest some form or sensitive connection, in the sense of 'sensitive' when taken to refer to the anomaly's repertoire of expressions such as Empathy and the Inner Sense, in one form or another. Inevitably, she had heard that Parker and Mirage, Parker and Lyle's half brother – as well as Jarod, Kyle, and their younger sister's half brother, and not including Gemini, Jarod's clone (twenty-seven years his junior) – both possessed the Inner Sense, which they had inherited from Catherine, their mother, and she supposed, all things given, that it was very possible, if one was to look at the passages on twins found in T-Corp scriptures, that Lyle also possessed the Inner Sense on top of what degree of Empathy she could not say, and a very heightened Perception.

She had read, and had heard, that high class Empaths, in certain instances, were prone to developing complications which would usually be diagnosed as in the realm of epilepsy, but which had more to do with their inability to screen the psychic streaming they were receiving so that it did not develop into negative feedback and begin to cause harm.

She was sure, however, that part of Lyle's connection with Angelo, quite aside from his being an Empath or not, and what class he was, if he was – and she knew that he was, knew that Reagan had been, a Class Five, out of seven classes, starting at One and working its way up to Seven – was hinged to some extent on both his and Angelo's heightened Perception.

She could not, however – would never, for as long as she lived – forget what had happened when Kyle had died.

She thought back to her readings of the T-Corp scriptures, thought back to the passages on inheritance of the anomaly and disposition to inherit expression, and to the passages which said that, in the case of the parents not having Convergence, that the degree to which the child's expression, assuming that it is identical to that of the parent from which it is inherited, is to be taken as inferior to that of the parent, that is, that the form of the expression possessed by the parent is done so to a higher degree to that of the child, or, alternately, that the child's expression is exhibited to a lesser degree or capability to that of the parent.

In her mind, her readings of the Scriptures, coupled with her assumption that Lyle and Brigitte had not, in fact, been Convergence partners, seemed to point to the fact that Lyle could _only_ be of a higher class than Reagan, unless she took Reagan's Empathy to have been simply spontaneous in nature, which she had not. She was certain that Lyle was, in fact, an Empath, and a high class Empath, and perhaps with an entirely new – or previously undiscovered – specialty. And if she was to take his history of epilepsy as an indicator, she would have to strike any possibility of his possessing the Inner Sense from the list, meaning that he was likely a single possessor, that is, that he did not possess more than one expression of the anomaly, as she was certain that had he had the Inner Sense, that it would have proved a useful coping mechanism in relation to his Empathy, that it would have served to stabilise his Empathy.

* * *

Merchant took note of the music played at the wake, filed it away for later reference, in case someone later asked her what exactly was played at Reagan's wake – Norah Jones, Sandi Thom, the Waifs, Corinne Bailey Rae. She asked about the songs/bands she didn't know and received strange – pitiful, pathetic – looks. She put her arms around Lyle, whispered in his ear, asked him to dance, felt the barely imperceptible nod he gave, and received more strange looks.

She cried when someone played Sumi Jo – she'd never particularly liked Sumi Jo – and rested her head on Lyle's shoulder and kept on crying.

The song changed, played Kate Cebrano, Kasey Chambers, Melinda Schneider and Jimmy Little, _Reach Out_ – she didn't know who they were but sang along anyway – played the Platters, Eartha Kitt – she sang at the top of her voice, didn't care who cared, didn't care who stared – played Des'ree – she apologised loudly, she didn't know that one, pretended she didn't see the way Angelo was looking at her, pretended she didn't care – played Roy Orbison – which made her laugh. She let Lyle to hug her and saw that he was scared, scared that she'd upset them, scared that they'd hurt her now. She hugged him back and wanted to tell him that it wasn't his fault, that what had happened wasn't his fault, but the words wouldn't come out, so she hugged him tighter. She wanted to tell him never to leave her, that in her heart, he was her family and she was his family, but the words wouldn't come out. She wanted to tell him not to be scared, but the words stayed inside.

And maybe, she didn't need to tell him.

* * *

_Five days later_

Emily just kept thinking how much she'd despised him, how angry she'd been at him. She hadn't even known him, yet she'd despised him almost unbearably, so much so that it had made her chest hurt to think of him, and to think of her Snow alongside him. During those times when that happened, she could barely breathe. She'd been asthmatic her whole life, but this was something different. And now he was dead, and she felt so… guilty… so wronged, because it had never been Reagan's fault that maybe he had been spared what her son had surely not. It had never been anyone else's fault but Lyle's!

It would have been nice, she thought, when she looked back, if she could say that it had been Ray who had seen her first and had approached her, but it had not happened that way, because it had been her who had seen him first, and it had been her who had approached him.

He had invited her to have a drink with him, not to talk, just to drink, just so that they would not been seen to be drinking alone – so uncool – and she had agreed and they'd left the bar and found a table to sit at.

She'd sat across the table from him and had asked him about his wife, Claire, was it? And his son, whose name, she was sorry to say, she could not recall.

Claire, that was right, Ray had confirmed, laughing a big laugh. Her memory was spot on! He did not, beyond mentioning that he'd remarried and that his wife and he had had a son, recall having included his son's name, however, which was probably the reason that she could not recall it. It was George.

Emily had smiled. She liked George. It reminded her of _Curious George_ and _George of the Jungle_, and they were both things that made her see the lighter, brighter side of life; they were both good things, and good qualities to have.

She'd told him, then, of her own son, of Snow. She couldn't remember now why she'd named him Snow, she'd said, but it had probably had something to do with when she'd first seen him, when she'd first been allowed to hold him… and he had just been so delicate, he'd just seemed so delicate, and she could not help loving him and wanting to protect him.

His father, of course, had stayed out of the picture. They'd never got back together, or anything. But she'd made her peace with that. She could never love him less because of his father's or her own faults.

Ray had been about to talk, then, when she'd started to cry.

That was exactly what she had done, she realised. She had blamed Reagan, she had despised Reagan, for a fault that was not his own, for a mistake that was not his own! She didn't know if she would ever stop crying, if she would ever be able to breathe properly again.

Several drinks and several hours later – she remembered Ray showing her a picture of his son, George, which he kept in his wallet – she'd stopped crying long enough to let him drive her to a motel in his car and book them into a room for one, to let him undress her in their room for one and lay her down on their bed for one, and several hours after that, she'd woken up to find herself alone.

She remembered how she'd cried when he'd made love to her. She remembered how he hadn't once asked why she'd been crying. She supposed, he had just assumed that it had been because of Snow's father.

She sat up and looked around the empty motel room, empty but for herself, and realised that what they had done had been to make love, but what Ray and she had done had been, for her at least, an escape, an escape that she could have had with anyone, and an escape that she felt particularly bad for now that the intoxication which had earlier loosened her inhibitions was gone and she realised that Ray was a married man, and that he was not married to her. He had not been married to her for a long time.

She wondered if he'd only had sex with her to satisfy his ego, to prove that, though married and with a son, he still had it, that that would not stop him from having fun, or if he'd done it to hurt her, to show her how much it had hurt him when she'd left him – when she'd gone to the Center – or if he'd still held feelings for her?

It seemed much too upsetting to her to think that he'd had sex with her purely out of an egoistic whim or longing. On the other hand, it was understandable that he'd been upset, even after all this time, even when he was in love with another woman. But if he was in love with another woman, if he truly was in love with Claire, she told herself, then he would not have fallen for any amount of advances on her part in the first place.

She tried to remember what advances she'd put on him, and wished then that she could have lied to herself that the alcohol and the growing headache was obscuring her memory, but she could not. She could not forget the way he had looked at her when they'd been having sex, and afterward, when it had been over, as though he didn't know her at all, as though he'd had no desire whatsoever to make any effort to get to know her, and as though she'd disgusted him, as though what he'd done with her had disgusted him, as though he had disgusted himself by having sex with her, by being unfaithful to his wife, and by being unfaithful to his wife with _her_, with his ex-wife!

She pulled her thighs closer to her chest and sobbed horribly and started to tremble. She wished that he had kissed her once, just once, or that he had stayed the night, or that he'd at least held her, but he'd had no interest in kissing or holding, he'd had no interest in her feelings or emotions or thoughts. He'd been thinking only of himself, and he hadn't cared really.


	16. Chapter 16

**After the island** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

A week later, Emily was convinced that she'd read the night with Ray wrongly. She was, she realised, as much as fault as he was for the outcome of the evening – she was, after all, a willing participant. She could not, then, rightly allow herself to hate him, at least for his actions of that night, and she didn't hate him, but that didn't – couldn't – make it hurt any less.

The one thing they didn't – never – told you about happily-ever-after, she reflected, was that when all was said and done and forgiveness was dished out, when all was forgiven but not forgotten – forgiven but not erased – the pain still lingered.

If Ray hadn't cared, of course, Emily reasoned, then he wouldn't have been upset in the slightest by what they had done, he wouldn't have shown the guilt or anger that he'd shown, if he hadn't cared at all.

Emily had no way of knowing if the someone he cared about was her or Claire, but she liked to think that he'd felt some of what he'd felt for her, because though they no longer loved each other, he remembered how they'd once been friends.

* * *

_Five months later_

Alvin Egil Raines was born the same day as Farfalla Russell, four months premature, and half sister to Snow and George.

The moment that she saw him, Eddie knew that Alvin would live a long and happy life, or so she told Dexter, who immediately believed her and knew that she must be right, she was his older sister, after all.

Waiting at the hospital with Margaret and Ethan for news of his mother and new baby brother or sister, Snow made a face when Margaret brought him back a Coke from a vending machine and told her that he wanted a Pepsi instead.

Margaret looked lost for a moment.

Snow turned away from her, already putting to rest the idea of having anything to drink at all that night.

Eddie watched Fred and Ginger dance by in black and white with Dexter on the television in her mother's hospital room and, when she saw that Dexter was bored with the old movie, got up and showed him her version of Ginger's dance routine, and when she fell over, she just picked herself back up again.

Snow stared at tiny Farfalla in her humidity crib, eyes blank in an equally blank face, except that when he turned away from the crib, he scrunched up his face and informed his mother that there was something wrong with his sister.

"She's the wrong colour," he said indifferently, "and she's too small. She'll probably…" at this point he paused, searching for the word, "expire."

Margaret made Ethan take him out after that and Ethan offered to buy him something from the vending machine, so he told Ethan that he didn't feel hungry, the baby was yucky and he didn't feel hungry anymore.

Ethan said nothing to him, but he knew that he hadn't liked what he'd said, and he told himself that he didn't care, that he hadn't wanted to upset Ethan, or Margaret, or his mother – who he decided he would call Emily from now on – because then it didn't seem as horrible, then _he_ didn't seem as horrible – but, by goodness, he felt horrible, and he liked it.

Even though he tried to tell himself that he hadn't meant it – that he didn't mean it really – it had cheered him immensely, and he thought that if the next vending machine had Pepsi – which had been Reagan's favourite – then he might just be able to smile.

Dexter laughed when Eddie attempted a particularly hard-looking dance move and toppled over, and Eddie, sat on the floor, hands beside her, laughed too.


End file.
